The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  I beheld leaves within the unfathomed blaze into one volume bound by love, the same

  that the universe holds scattered through its maze.

  Substance and accidents and their modes became

  as if together fused, all in such wise

  that what I speak of is one simple flame.

  November 2, 1980

  About all I can see clearly is that 3-74 was a heroic act that consisted of the overcoming of fate. "We can be heroes for just one day," to quote Bowie. It all has to do with waking up long enough to perform one action, to make one change, before you sink back down into sleep, before you again forget. [...]

  What strikes me about this is that it is cosmogenesis in miniature, in the microcosm, because something has come into being ex nihilo. What the person did—the heroic act—he could not do given who he is, given his history, his karma. It is an impossibility. Thus in a real and literal sense a new self has been born in him, since this fact, this deed, could not issue out of field self, the self is splintered throughout time and space. This is as much a miracle as the original cosmogenesis; in a sense it is the original cosmogenesis, and perhaps the ruah is present at it as it was in the beginning.

  So I felt as if another self had taken me over; my actions were "disassociated," without ideation; and then Thomas came into being in me. Maybe he was new, not a lost part rejoining me but new ex nihilo, the permanent offspring of the heroic deed that broke the power of the world rule existentially. What world lost, self acquired. There is a quantum transfer of essence from world itself, so that the balance between the two shifts critically. Self is acting on world, rather than world on self; it is as if up until then the self was only a product of world, its thing; it was a thing among things, controlled and directed and shaped, as a potter shapes a clay vessel. And all its deeds and all its thoughts have only been world acting and speaking through it, within a closed system of which that self was only a component.

  For one thing, if you view it in science fiction terms, in terms of ideas, S-F has developed vis-à-vis time travel and changing the past: has not this one new deed changed the entire future, the entire future history of the universe? Because the universe is one great field, and to introduce a truly new thing or event into it is to alter it in its entirety. Permanently.

  Since world is now no longer a closed system it is no longer in effect a prison.

  ***

  [1:121] Is the secret connected with time and the reversal of time? Cosmic resorption? I am right in my writing: reality is a series of Chinese boxes, a box within a box within a box, etc.: but a final point comes when you have Valis, but what or who Valis is I have no idea. The Tao, YHWH, cosmic Christ, Brahman, Shiva, Krishna, or a quantum mechanics phenomenon. Or ruah, the spirit of God breathing creation into existence out of nothing—ex nihilo—you finally wind up with: non-being—that is, not-is-real, and the "is" is only seeming, is not real. You open box after box and ascend the levels of being (esse, substantia, einai) and then you open the last one and it contains—nothing! And yet you're faced with the mystery or paradox that Ho On (for want of a better term) is actually right here and now, in the very trash at hand, not far away at all—the ultimate paradox in terms of your long search through level after level of being—he is at the initial least real (sic) level. You wind up back where you started, paradoxically. But now you know that this utterly worthless trash level—mere appearance—is somehow also Ho On, whom you seek. "The Buddha is a piece of toilet paper."74 "The Savior is a crushed beer can in the alley." Could this be the final great enantiodromia?

  So if you push essence far enough in terms of ascending levels, you find you have gone a full circle, and you wind up encountering ultimate deity cooking and writing pop tunes on the radio and popular novels, and a breath of wind in the weeds in the alley.

  It's as if the ultimate mystery is that there is no mystery—it's like what Robert Anton Wilson says in the Cosmic Trigger about being outside the Castle when you think you're in, and inside when you think you're out.

  And in a way what is most paradoxical is that I said it all in Ubik years ago! So in a way my exegesis of 2-3-74 says only, "Ubik is true." All I know today that I didn't know when I wrote Ubik is that Ubik isn't fiction. In all of history no system of thought applies as well to 2-3-74 as Ubik, my own earlier novel. When all the metaphysical and theological systems have come and gone there remains this inexplicable surd: a flurry of breath in the weeds in the back alley—a hint of motion and of color. Nameless, defying analysis or systemizing: it is here and now, lowly, at the rim of perception and of being. Who is it? What is it? I don't know.

  I ask for 30 years, what is real? And in 2-3-74 I got my answer as if the universe—well, as if my question traveled across the whole universe and came back to me in the form of experienced answers ... and what I wind up with after 6½ years of studying those experienced answers is: a surd. A perturbation in the reality field—an irregularity, a departure from the normal—a tugging or pulling or bending. And that is all. Not even the thing, the perturbing body itself; only its effects on "the reality field." Something out of the ordinary—like I say, a surd.

  So what, then, do I know about the nature of reality? That an irregularity can show up in it that points to—something else. Only a sign.

  Q: "Ti to on?"

  A: Heidegger says, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" To which I ask, "Why does Heidegger think there is something instead of nothing?"

  The tug is real and the "reality field" tugged on isn't. So that which is genuinely real is pointed to by its effect on the "reality field" (which isn't real) but what it is that is doing the tugging I have no idea.

  [1:127] The perturbation in the reality field was not by me but by the Tao. Nonetheless I broke my own programming by a heroic act of will. Yes; our spatiotemporal aspects (what we take to be reality) are indeed our own prior thought formations coming back to us. Yes; anamnesis is recognizing them as such: which permits you to break their hold (programming) over you by (on your part) an act of (your) will. Doing something new—introducing one single new change—destroys their ossified nature and starts up real time, it causes a time perturbation, as if time were running backward; this may be due to one forcing the prior thought formations back into the past where they properly belong; it would seem to you, then, as if the future had broken in, moving retrograde in time. This "future breaking in" is: real time! Due to the destroying of the supremacy of the past (prior thought-formations as world). Once these prior thought-formations' power over you. [...] You can see (?) (experience) the Tao: true reality as it is without the prior thought formations. You can see the tug by the Tao (matrix containing the eide) on reality-as-a-field.

  [1:137]

  [1:138] 4:30 A.M.: I was lying here thinking how Christ would show up in the alley and the weeds because that is where he is and things of daily life and world, and I asked myself, "Would he be additional substantial/material trace bits?" And I realized, "No, as a tug, a perturbation—the iron filings and magnetic field perturbation"—the eide are not material, not physical; so the only way they (he) would show up would be as a tug; and this would render the plural objects and processes as a field perturbed as a unitary whole—I visualized it so clearly. Since he is not real in the spatiotemporal sense, and yet he is here not there, in this world, immediately at hand; I understood it for a moment so clearly—and it was exactly what I saw in 3-74 that I called Valis. It is the only evidence we would have. [...] So I arrive at the conclusion to this exegesis and it is where I started: Valis is the cosmic Christ; but to understand this I had to reject all other possibilities one by one over a 6½ year period; and, most important of all, I had to study Plato's metaphysics thoroughly and rejoin it to its other half: Christianity, the anamnesis of the Eucharist, arising out of Orphism, from which Plato's metaphysics came.

  [1:170] But most of all: breath. The pattern in the iron filings: that it is breath to weeds: field to iron filings. It is the
stirring in the weeds, the pattern (structure) as with Pythagoras. Field. Arrangement. It is not substantial; it is nothing (but a field). And the AI voice—very faintly, arranging my thoughts!

  Absolutely it is a field, as in quantum mechanics. Not the iron filings, but the pattern.

  I can visualize it very clearly—visualize Valis. Set-ground reversal. The not-is is Valis. The is is not.

  It is normally a weak field, too weak to be detected. Only under exceptional circumstances does it intensify to cause a perceptible perturbation (3-74). Paradoxically, though it is weak it is irresistible. Why, this is the Tao! This is how the Tao works! (vide the Tao Te Ching). Weak and—everywhere (Ubik!).

  [...]

  It is weak and yet it cannot be resisted. This is the Tao. It works through what is small. I am small. It worked through (on) me. To affect modern history! Wu wei.75

  [...]

  If all reality (universe) is a (one) field, it (Tao) need set up a tiny perturbation at one space time, and ultimately the whole field will be affected, by inducing an enantiodromia of the whole field! Through a chain of mounting flip-flops! I was one such, in 3-74.

  [...]

  I finally understand. This is what is meant by "a perturbation in the reality field." One tiny tug sets a sequence of mounting, growing changes in motion, ending in massive (total?) enantiodromia: victory. Over world. Since all reality is one field the effects of the initial perturbation end only when the final enantiodromia occurs, and all the "counters" flip over to their opposites.

  This is what TMITHC is about, and deliberately so. But: the real secret is:

  Something new (although tiny, bordering on ex nihilo, on nothing, yet something) is introduced into an otherwise closed system. My example? My act vis-à-vis the Xerox missive. As a result the entire closed system is affected throughout.

  [1:175] The fact that I wound up with Valis as a surd when I finished my first "complete" or "successful" overview shows how scrupulous I was. It would have to be left over. Deity can't be fitted into a theoretical system; it is irreducible and stands alone. But at least that way I could focus on it as isolated—which paved the way for my total overview in which this surd was included but only as "the absolute," leading finally to my ferociously close scrutiny of it in total isolation (from my own mind and from the reality field as well).

  I realized that it came into existence literally out of nothing, was pure arrangement and not the things arranged (acted upon). I visualized (conceived of) it as a breath on the weeds of the alley—then connected it to the "heroic act that causes genuine newness" to enter the world; then, realizing that it is weak but irresistible, I saw it as the Tao and hence saw its relationship to the dialectic and mounting chains of events culminating in macroenantiodromia: the purpose of it "breathing" on the "weeds in the alley." Which shows total wisdom on its part!

  [1:185] Well, my perception of 3-74 is that I encountered something outside of me; and my recent theory is that it came into existence out of nothing—at least in terms of our reality field.

  [1:208] Yes, something can be irreal and yet powerful; the lie is powerful; it thrusts itself at us like a reality, but I saw in 2-74 that it isn't real. [...]

  Irreality, then, is the basic defect of the entropic old flux/cosmos. There are valuable bits in it (e.g., Mozart symphonies; we'll use that as an example) but they are not real in that they pass away; they never are. But the meta-soma assimilates them into itself like permanent memories stored in a mind.

  [1:248] I would even be willing to argue that an experience such as mine (2-3-74) justifies the Fall in the sense of making it worth it due to the absolute joy generated by the re-collection and return. I know it was for me—all the tearful years were not only nullified; they were overbalanced by the bliss experienced in restoration. Whether my feelings in history could rightly be projected onto the deity I don't know; but if my system is right in all respects, 2-3-74 was the deity recovering its memory and identity, and so is representative—a sort of microcosm of the total deity's own travels, its journey. (I envision deity in dynamic process undergoing unfolding stages of self-knowledge.) Perhaps this is the ultimate price of the game: self-awareness, acquired through "external" plural standpoints, of which I am one. Then I would say, it is worth it, this journey. That's my subjective opinion. So the Fall is a vast adventure, culminating in a joy that outweighs the arduousness and sorrow of the trip itself. And out of this adventure the deity knows itself more clearly, and, since (as I say) intellegere is its essence, this matter outweighs all else.

  [1:257] November 16, 1980

  Have I had it backward? I've always said: I saw His Body camouflaged as the world. Maybe it's the other way. I saw how the pieces of the world fitted together to form his body—this was what I saw that I called Valis, externally. This is the same thing as I understood inwardly when I saw that the wise horn of the dialectic selected pieces of the antecedent universe, as a stockpile, and fitted the pieces together to form the macrometasomakosmos which was its own self, its own metasoma. Here seen both ways (externally as Valis and internally as an inner consciousness): world evolved into the Body of Christ; world as pieces that seen acting and operating together became—were now—Christ as cosmic body. So it is world first; or rather they, as plural pieces, are world. Then they come together so that the they becomes an it, one body made up of all the many objects and processes that were—that had formerly been—the world. The lower plural evolve into the higher unitary. This was one process seen two ways, seen inwardly and outwardly. Yet you could still say, "His body was camouflaged as world. World was transubstantiated into Christ's Body." But it isn't Christ's Body posing as world; it is world becoming—joining together to form—Christ's body. Again: it is a cosmic evolution. Not the higher invading the lower but the lower evolving into the higher, with pieces of world added element by element to complete and perfect this titanic body, a body so vast that I could only comprehend dimly enormous—infinite—volumes of space, space such as I had never conceived or apprehended before. Larger than the universe, which in comparison is merely finite. Limited. And all of it was alive and all of it thought. And the pieces didn't just happen to fit together; they didn't just haphazardly come together; Christ himself searched for the pieces, took the pieces, placed each piece of the world in place correctly, integrated, beautiful, a kosmos, a macrokosmos that was good, beautiful, pleasing and harmonious, where all the many parts that had been world interacted as one unity.* And yet absolutely in no way was this vast body anthropomorphic; it was not a human body. It was a permanent body that continually became more reticulated and arborized and complex and perfect, that had once been world. So my inner vision of the macrometasomakosmos formed out of the antecedent universe, and my external perception of Valis "camouflaged" are one and the same. And it is right here. Evolution, not reversion. Gestalting on my part; form-perception.

  And this was accomplished by him defeating world over and over again in dialectical combat with it, where he subdued it, disassembled it and assimilated it in the form of useful and appropriate pieces into his own vast body. Every new part incorporated—self-incorporated—came as a result of defeating and subduing world, but not defeating and subduing it by force, but rather by wisdom; by his being wiser than it, although not as powerful; it was his wisdom victorious over its power, and as it lost each time it lost another piece of itself. So the vast body grows, and with each defeat world becomes less and he becomes more: more completed, more perfected, more internally intricate and organized; and everything valuable in world is preserved eternally in his body as the right part fitted into the right place.

  And he systematically deprived world of its blind, inexorable causality, and substituted his volition in simulation of that mechanical causality, so that to the unaided eye causality still remained ... just as to the unaided eye the plural constituents of world remained plural and unalive. And unable to think. And not integrated into a whole, a whole that was evolving internal
ly, just as world passed over—which is to say evolved—into it. So in a sense there were two evolutions: world evolving into his body, not the pieces sort of swimming together but selected and arranged by him and an evolution internal to his body: the reticulation and arborizing, based on events in the world fed into his body, continual accretions passing from world—where they were transitory—into his body—where they were forever preserved and remembered, like within a memory system in a mind or brain. And all the internal arrangement was morphological, not in terms of space and time, but in terms of information, as if arranged by meaning, like a kind of language. Like neural conduits in a brain. There was an endless processing of things as information, as if every combination was tried out, a perpetual rapid activity, like an internal metabolism, an information metabolism. It was using objects—combinations and recombinations—of objects to think with. And every given thing was limited (telos) by every other thing, in comparison to which the antecedent universe was chaotic (atelos). It was alive; it thought; and it initiated its own movement. Nothing acted on it; all its movements were self-initiated. And nothing outside it acted to construct it; it constructed itself.

  And if you were outside it in the chaotic antecedent universe you were in a prison; but if you were inside it you were in a park or garden. And it constantly attacked the prison to dismantle it as a source of parts. And this had been going on for two thousand years, a really very bitter but somehow also joyful war.

  Finally, when an object was incorporated into this structure it became real for the first time, as if up until then in a certain way it had been illusory: coming into being and passing away without ever having truly existed. But now it was safe from decay and harm.