The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  I must go on being a Christian, acting out the role of genuine revolutionary apostolic Christian, as a strategy: in order to overthrow the Black Iron Prison which I detest. But that is what Christianity is for me: a strategy. I know—all the time that I am a secret, authentic, revolutionary Christian—that it is Platonism and Neoplatonism that's objectively true. But the Platonist and Neoplatonist has no revolutionary drive; he will not change society, the world, to bring on the Kingdom; therefore I must live as if (als ob) Christianity—genuine Christianity—were true. Strange.

  [1:61] October 21, 1980

  The strangest most eerie thought just struck me. If USA 1974 and Rome A.D. 45 are two spatiotemporal aspects of a common essence they as aspects if superimposed would clash, not blend—this despite the common essence; I don't know why I know this but I do. But if it's really Rome A.D. 45 then they would blend, because the percipient would see that USA 1974 is Rome A.D. 45. What I have been calling a superimposition is more like a metamorphosis. A certain building is a building in Syria in the first century A.D. Reality is seen under the aspect of Rome A.D. 45, the Holy Land. As if reverting. I noticed palm trees and sand, the warm wind, the relaxing people ... like a scene in ancient Syria.

  ***

  [1:69]

  I think that just now by linking Plato's anamnesis and Form world with Dionysus and the greater mysteries, and the Christian Eucharist to Dionysus and the greater mysteries—which links Christian Eucharist to Plato's anamnesis and Form world—which renders the spatiotemporal world irreal, thus abolishing the power of "astral determinism" over you, which is the basic task of religion because then the splintered soul implodes and again is divine and immortal and knows it—

  I succeeded!

  [1:72] October 22, 1980

  As of late last night my emotions (affective self) moved into synch with my intellect (as engaged in this exegesis), and the result was that I surveyed a world-picture of such bleakness that it was for a time beyond my capacity to bear. I saw and understood suffering, not just intellectually, not just emotionally, but fully, with complete comprehension. Today I have thought about it, and the only attitude that can or should be brought to bear is a stoic one, in fact a heroic one, a facing of this bleakness unflinchingly, with no attempt to flee from it as a vision or existentially, as a way of being in the world. It is a view of the weary wheel of Buddhism; it is the Buddha's view of absolute suffering and the need not to be reborn, to get off the wheel. [...]

  Each creature is born, suffers, dies, is again born, forever and ever, because the world soul—there is just one soul, and it has fragmented into billions of bits—made the primordial and primary mistake of taking the spatiotemporal realm as real, thus plunging itself into enslavement and multiplicity. For a few there is a way out: discovery that the spatiotemporal world is not real, an ascent back up into unity and freedom, but only for a few bits (sparks) is this possible; the enormous mass of fragments will remain caught forever, unless some final great savior comes here and frees us en masse. I hope this will happen but I doubt it. Every fly with a missing leg, every cat beleaguered by fleas, every human fearing economic want—the endless wheel turns for all of us and it turns forever, in this irreal time we have fallen victim to.

  "The saying that is uttered in secret rites, to the effect that we men are in a sort of prison, and that one ought not to loose himself from it nor yet to run away, seems to me something great and not easy to see through; but this at least I think is well said, that it is the gods who care for us, and we men are one of the possessions of the gods."72 So says Plato referring to the Pythagoreans. Everything is contained here: the vision and the stance, and, finally, what may be the only solace that can be held out, that the gods care for us because we are their possessions. This paragraph will have to do if I am to be saved from the vision I have seen, and it is meant to save; it is Plato's great mind coming to bear on the situation, with full knowledge of the reality of the situation, the Greek equipoise that Apollo exemplified; that Attic calm to which I must return, or I am destroyed.

  Premise: the primordial Fall was caused by our—by us, not our ancestors—making the error of taking the spatiotemporal realm to be real.

  (1)In 2-74 I saw that the spatiotemporal realm was not real.

  (2)Therefore I reversed the original Fall—which is doing much more than remembering—by anamnesis—the reality of the Form world, the universals. What I realized last night is that I as a soul splintered up in fragments through space and time, literally exploded through space and time, in incarnation after incarnation, my unity shattered. This is the "weary wheel" of the Orphics. This realization is terrible. Because even though I reversed the effects of the Fall for myself, I can see the dreadful condition of the others of us, born again and again (but this is temporal talk; it is irreal. Splintered is the correct term). [...]

  Now the results of not recognizing Tat tvam asi seem actually sinister, since you literally are other life forms, other humans and other creatures; you as primordial soul are splintered, exploded, over thousands of years and thousands of miles. Tat tvam asi is not a luxury for the languid philosopher or the special mystic; it is essential in the reversal of a primordial fall (our taking the spatiotemporal realm as real).

  [...]

  Recollection as re-collection: calling one's splintered, scattered parts in, to a center. The primordial explosion reversed as a calling back together, a sort of teleological implosion, as if time were running backward.

  [1:83] Rats. I'm rediscovering things that I already knew; that are, in fact, the basis of my system. I am too tired; I must quit for a time and rest.

  [1:84] Probably the wisest view is to say: the truth—like the Self—is splintered up over thousands of miles and years; bits are found here and there, then and now, and must be re-collected; bits appear in the Greek naturalists, in Pythagoras, Plato, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Neoplatonism, Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, Taoism, Mani, orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Orphism, the other mystery religions. Each religion or philosophy or philosopher contains one or more bits, but the total system interweaves it into falsity, so each as a total system must be rejected, and none is to be accepted at the expense of all the others (e.g., "I am a Christian" or "I follow Mani"). This alone, in itself, is a fascinating thought: here in our spatiotemporal world we have the truth but it is splintered—exploded like the eide—over thousands of years and thousands of miles and (as I say) must be recollected, as the Self or Soul or eidos must be. This is my task.

  In that case, each given system is in itself part of the enslaving snare of delusion; in other words, as soon as I avow one philosopher or system (e.g., Spinoza or Schopenhauer or Kant or Anaxagoras or Parmenides or Gnosticism) I have become again or more ensnared, as I am by this spatiotemporal world itself; it is as if the eidos of Truth is exploded and splintered like all the eide. And all the Selves and Souls. But what else could you expect here in realm #4? Since everything real is here only in discrete bits. Of course this means that I can never come up with the whole, true, complete explanation/answer. I can re-collect and re-collect, do better and better, but never completely make unified the eidos of Truth. Yet, in 3-74 when I meta-abstracted, a great deal of the eidos of Truth was revealed to me; however, alas, I did not understand it then and do not yet.

  Look; I may be on to something here, that in realm #4 it is impossible to re-collect any given eidos including that of a true verbal (informational) picture (analog) of reality; that in fact the true informational analog will be exploded over thousands of miles and thousands of years like all other eide. Such is the situation here in the spatiotemporal realm; this is one of its drawbacks (among many). Fascinating. In that case, no wonder I haven't been able to match my 2-3-74 experience to any religion or any philosopher, yet many seem in part to apply. The truth is splintered!* This would explain, too, why the sacerdotal power is found in bits in, say, the alley; for the same reason: it is exploded ubiquitously. (In additio
n to the places I listed above where I've found bits of the truth I should add: the Hermetics and the Kabbala and quantum mechanics.)

  Could it be said that every now and then an additional bit is reticulated? So-to-speak revealed? So 2-3-74 could contain one or more elements of the truth that are new?

  In one area the Evangelical Christians are correct: in regard to Bible prophecy. The Bible does contain archetypes that print out over and over again, and are—some of them—applicable to present-day times. (I need only recall "Acts" and the dream material in Tears, the latter specifically being either from Daniel or Revelation.)

  So one great realization is: the map is exploded; the map is splintered. (And, perhaps, the map is not complete; see Hussey on the map paradox, the vicious regression.73)

  [1:86] October 24, 1980

  If the eide are exploded through the spatiotemporal realm, so must be Noös: disintegrated here in realm #4; but if the percipient ascends from realm #4 he may see Noös re-collected, reintegrated and hence unitary, as it actually is. What I am saying is that the eide are not actually exploded; they are exploded in terms of the spatiotemporal realm, if my meaning is clear; since realm #4 is illusory, the explosion, the splintering, is illusory. And if this is true of the eide, the Forms, this also is true of Noös: our false categories of ordering, of arranging time and space, explode and splinter the eide; and they explode and splinter Noös; but this is not really the case. This is why it is correct to say that our realm #4 and its spatiotemporal ordering are irreal. If they were real, then the eide and Noös would in actuality be exploded and splintered; but they are not. To see Noös integrated is not for Noös to reintegrate, but to be seen as it is and always is.

  This was what I saw that I called Valis: Noös reintegrated in terms of my perception of it: re-collected.

  Noös exploded (here in realm #4) is Noös banalized, as in the chapter headings in Ubik: Noös re-collected is as Ubik appears in the heading of the final chapter, no longer banalized, trivialized, debased into rubbish. This banalization is a measure of the Fall of this realm; and again it illustrates what I have remarked on: that things do not appear in this realm #4 as what they really are, that finally Christ will bring about what I call "the great reversal," whereupon we will no longer see Noös (God) banalized and exploded, but, as if reversed, sacred and a unity: as it really is. Meanwhile, here, with things appearing in reverse to what their essence is, Noös is obscured; veiled.

  October 25, 1980

  But whereas a given eidos is finite in realm #4—it only enters at certain places and certain times, i.e., is printed out at one place and time but not another—Noös is ubiquitous. Therefore if it chooses to so-to-speak drop its mask and reverse appearances in realm #4 (enantiodromia) it is in everything at every time; it is infinite (cf. Xenophanes). Or, put another way, it can be anything or any constellation of things and their processes at any place and any time.

  [1:88] October 25, 1980

  If a gun were put to my head and I had to give one short answer as to what Valis was, I would say, "The Tao, as the Absolute." And as to what happened in 3-74: the regulation of the Yin and the Yang, i.e., the dialectic, by the Tao; the Tao asserting itself as master of the dialectic that makes up our world-order of flux and strife. ("The Tao is what lets him first the light, then the dark"—this has always stuck in my mind as the basic definition of the Tao.) And this has to do with advanced physics; so Warrick is right about Valis and 3-74. Sentient physics.

  But also: Valis was my splintered self "imploding" back together, the pieces that had exploded over space and time reversing their direction in enantiodromia and re-collecting to form their original unity. Of this I am absolutely certain; but look: this, too, could be an example of an event of higher physics! (This is why time seemed to flow backward; and forward-moving time had exploded my self over thousands of years and miles.)

  This is why I had the distinct and indubitable impression that my own earlier thought-contents were coming back to me in the form of world—e.g., Ubik and "Faith of ... ," etc. World was familiar to me as my own earlier mind. I never could explain this until now. It was (I see now) the re-collecting of my own splintered self as if time were running backward, turning an explosion into an implosion. So beyond doubt enantiodromia and other higher laws of physics perceived by the Taoist and Greek naturalists (pre-Socratics) were involved! I see! The normal process of self splintering was reversed. [...]

  The first space-time thing that returned to me was my most recent book, Tears, and the world ("Acts") in it where a main part of myself had been exploded to. Then later came Ubik.

  The above paragraph is the most important realization of my six and a half years of exegesis.

  [1:93] October 26, 1980

  Therefore my experience in 2-3-74 now that it has been followed by a successful exegesis—and only in the last two weeks has it become successful—pays off in the way that I perceive ordinary daily reality. I cannot bring back the absolute vision of the morphologically arranged realm that I had in 2-74, the anamnesis; but I now can apprehend this realm from the standpoint of the realm #3 reality; I can see in the epiphenomenal realm the constants shining through ... and this is the triumph in practice of Platonist metaphysics, its whole point: that you learn to see in the flux realm the constants, literally see them with the educated eye, educated by Plato's metaphysics of the forms. [...]

  But the real success of the exegesis is that as I become old, now, and wear out, I feel myself wearing out only as an instance of an eternal soul or form; that nothing is lost, nothing is destroyed; and although I don't crave immortality I do crave vigor and joy and the running that I associate with my eidos. And I know, too, that all that I have lost in my life is epiphenomenal, people and cats and things, that in reality nothing is lost. So I can face my own aging and mortality with calm and even pleasure, since I am grounded in both a mystical vision of super reality and an intellectual exegesis based on that vision, the totality of which provides me with a philosophy and with an experience with world that is harmonious and wonderful and intellectually satisfying: it is a vision of intactness, of my own self and world. Of everything as a negentropic whole. As regards my writing: it will permanently affect the macrometasomakosmos in the form of reticulation and arborizing—and hence will survive in reality forever, in the underlying structure of the world order.

  [1:94] November 1, 1980

  This is the surd I am left with after completing the metaphysical system of my exegesis: a surd. There is what the AI voice called "a perturbation in the reality field." This is Valis; this is the most important part. Originally I spoke of it as a valence away from plumb. Now I think of it as a tugging, like the moon's effect on Earth's oceans creating, by tugging, the tides.

  I say, the reality field is not real but the tug is. But what the tug points to—that is, what is doing the tugging—I have no idea. I know of it only by its effects on reality, in setting up an irregularity in reality, in the field, the way reality, the field, behaves. It is being affected from outside—outside reality.

  This surd (something irrational that can't be explained after everything that is rational has been) may stick with me. So I may wind up with something like quantum mechanics facts. In fact it may be an event in quantum mechanics, like something related to the Tao. I don't know.

  And this is what I wanted the most to explain. And this tug is right here and now, in the very trash stratum of reality. I have set out in pursuit of ontology, rising from level to level, only to go full circle and come back where I started: pop tunes on the radio, weeds in the alley ... and the faint flurry of a kind of breath, as if some invisible spirit, perhaps the ruah, is breathing creation into existence ex nihilo. Yes, I am on the rim of reality; level after level each one more ontologically real than the previous, and then—nothingness. The void. Only a faint wind stirring reality, tugging at it. And maybe a glint of color, briefly. And a word or two as set to ground. 6½ years of work: a glint, a rustle in
the weeds of the alley; I am confronted by unfathomable mystery, as if I saw cosmogenesis reversed: cosmic resorption, until at last creation ceased to be, and only the spirit moved across the face of the void. And, equally real and equally enigmatic, a small murmuring voice speaking in the night, as if from immeasurable distances away.

  I have found the ultimate source: a rustle of wind in the weeds and faint, distant words by a lovely voice that is neither male nor female. Both bordering on the rim of not being there but being, I am convinced, the truly real; in contrast to the great substantial world order, the galaxies and nebulae, suns and planets, civilizations and deeds.

  I cannot say that I have found moksa, enlightenment. I do not understand what I saw and what happened in 2-3-74. Something helped me. Who? Oddly, although I don't know who I do know why (since the AI voice told me that). I chased after reality, and how far did I actually get? "Ti to on?" the pre-Socratics asked. Perhaps it is the wrong question.

  An odd thought came to me. I end my exegesis with something—what I call a surd because that is what it is—that can't be fitted into an otherwise satisfactory system. This one thing is simple. No elaboration of it seems possible, no implications extracted and elaborated. It makes me think of Dante's semplice lume. And my exploded morphological structure reminds me of Dante's description of God as the book of the universe whose pages are scattered throughout the universe.