The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  [...]

  My sorrow and my pain and my loneliness, paradoxically, increase the net level of agape in the Godhead, because it indicates that I would rather return to him, in preference to being—to possessing einai. Thus, to my surprise, I find that my suffering restores the Godhead and augments it; he knows why I suffer, although I do not. Human sorrow, then, is a source of joy, a means to joy, in which the now sorrowing person will later share. When he returns, as I did in 11-17-80. Sorrow is a means to infinite bliss, its instrument, and we can't see this until it completes itself. Comes full cycle. To know this is the great secret.

  ***

  [88:59] I was reading over the pages on love that I wrote last night; they remind me of Paul. From them I deduce that I did in fact experience the agapē of God: his love that created us as independent creatures—this love deliberately curtailed so that we could go forth with essence, with true autonomous being; love created us. But we are vaguely unhappy—this is all such ecstatic writing, so mysterious. Our suffering increases his love because he knows that we value nonexistence more than this existence because this existence requires us to be independent hence cut off from him; we yearn to retrace our steps and this increases his love and joy, and in us love occurs, love like that that he has; it now occurs in us as well, we whom love gave birth to. Compared with this love, world is nothing, a cinder, dust; for us to feel it in us, and finally if we feel it in us, we feel his love for us once more, the love that created us in the first place. Our own love is an echo of the power, the love, that caused us to be in the first place. I understand from all this that compared with this love—love by him in the first place, then loved by us, then loved by him again, that original love that created us re-experienced—there is nothing, nothing at all. We only find him again when we begin to feel love in us, echoes of the love he felt. He responds, then, with his own love; we did not know, when we suffered, why we suffered. But it gave him joy, because he saw it as a sign of love growing in us echoing his love. This is source for us and it is goal—unremembered as source and unknown as goal. But still felt—felt as suffering. I can't explain it. It is too mysterious; but love is the origin and love is the goal. There is nothing that compares with it; it is everything. "Love triumphs over love," I wrote. I don't know now what that means. Yet I sense that it is correct. God withdraws so as to allow us independent existence, this is his gift and sacrifice, to let us go. And then a time comes when we want to return and abandon independent existence: now we have penetrated the mystery of existence: that non-being with him is preferable to being (Sein) away from him. The great gift of einai is given back voluntarily, renounced "that I might live in him invisible and dim."81 That says it all.

  Love equals non-being, the dissolution of the separated creature.

  He feels such joy at our voluntary return, our renouncing of existence; and this joy is shared by us when we find him again. This is the origin of the infinite bliss that I felt: love as source, and return to love once more.

  [88:68] December 21, 1980

  Very important insight. 3-74 was a massive enantiodromia for which it was responsible. Its purpose: it was put here to regulate hence guide and control human history. (This view is halfway between theology and conspiracy.) This means it is not God but also it is not a—

  construct?

  Yes, it is a construct. It can be thought of in S-F terms.

  The Torah as a construct One and the same. But what?

  Ubik

  Like: trash Torah.

  Hierarchically arranged reality: with it (Valis) as apex (we're not), and, in addition, it itself arranges; so it is self-generating—it is a UTI and it is not conquering us; it is subordinating and unifying us hierarchically in terms of the ecosphere—life—of this planet; but this is not God. If anything, it inspires us (rather than limiting us). But it does coordinate us. It is a brain and not a mind. In a peculiarly literal way, we do its thinking for it. The arrangements of our information are not a result of its thinking but are its thinking.

  Of this I am certain. Everything about Valis must be made with this discriminatory realization. So it is as if this planet is alive. But this is a perfect description of the Alexandrian-stoic logic: world reason but not God!

  It is Christ and he literally is becoming the physical world—by literal transubstantiation, as logos becomes flesh. That's it: "the word made flesh"! [...] Yes: Valis is a penetration of the physical (matter as field) by spirit. This is different from pantheism, so physicists will find that reality behaves more and more like Brahman and in Taoism, but this is a dynamic ongoing process, I know! I saw it.

  Suddenly I see it all: "The logos became flesh," and this set off a logos-ization of reality itself, a strategy. No longer was Hagia Sophia outside of creation but at its physical core! It is Christ (if one understands that Christ is the Logos).

  [...]

  One thing is certain: Valis is no mere spirit; Valis is physically real.

  Christ is here in this world on this side of the grave. Apparently God is not.

  Hence we speak of the logos as world reason.

  [88:76] Okay, I loved Parsifal in high school—and nothing satisfied me in life thereafter, in comparison. Q: where do you go next from Act III of Parsifal? A: There is only one place, one next step, one answer: to Christ himself.

  This is it. Nothing else ever made me happy because nothing else ever logically followed Act III of Parsifal, along any axis—aesthetically, logically, epistemologically, spiritually, topically, etc. I wanted more. There is no more, except in knowing Christ, which means: to have him born in you—hence the nativity; it's all modeled on the "Good Friday spell," part of Act III. I knew what I wanted at 15 years old: the next step after "the Good Friday spell." And I knew what that is, and, finally, I found it, (2-3-74) and I have it yet. But I found, then, the next step, unsuspected: 11-17-80. From the Son as gate I made my way to the Father!

  Parsifal deals with the Son, it is penultimate, which I did not suspect. From salvation, blood and the cross to—agapē. From this world (2-3-74, the crucifixion) to the next (the Father and his love, not world).

  The blood and the cross are the highest point of this world (2-3-74). Then tears—"of the repentant sinner"—turn to agapē, as in Tears; the tears has to do with sin and atonement and Christ and the cross. But all this (sorrow) is a gate to: love (v. Tears!). And love (agapē) equals ecstasy; so tears of sorrow—the cross—are converted into the opposite: joy. Through agapē, this is the goal and mystery of Christianity, this conversion: utter sorrow (Mitleid) to bliss (agapē).

  This is "pity's highest power," it leads to bliss since agapē links pity (compassion) to joy—compassion becomes or even is (!!) agapē, and agapē ushers in joy because it (starting as Mitleid) ends up in God, since agapē is his einai.

  So compassion (Mitleid) is the road from this world to God; hence the crucifixion and the feelings engendered lead to God the Father because of the common element of agapē: this is the miraculous healing of Amfortas' wound.

  You cannot feel Mitleid without feeling agapē, and you cannot feel agapē without entering into and sharing God's esse.

  This is what happens at the ending of Tears, based on my experience in '70, of sorrow becoming compassion becoming love, and, in 3-74, joy; and in 11-17-80 reaching God and his pure agapē nature.

  Somehow my action vis-à-vis Covenant House fits into this sorrow-compassion-agapē-joy-God sequence.82 So it's all based on my earlier sorrows, circa 1970! When I was writing Tears!

  Compassion (Mitleid) is a blend of sorrow and love. Thus it is the nexus between sorrow and joy—joy entering because love leads to God. So I now know what "Mitleids Hichteit Macht"83 refers to. Sorrow to compassion to agapē to God to bliss. The way of the cross now makes sense to me. I understand why Jesus had to die and in the way he did, if he was to be a gate (way) to the Father.

  The transfiguration in me occurred when I had the dream: punishment (death) exacted on Peterson as justi
ce for what he had done (the fallow law).84 But, seeing this (the OT) I felt compassion (which I experienced as sorrow). This took me from the era of justice to the era of mercy, and out from under the law of justice in my own case; it also led me eventually to God through Christ. The old king in the dream is YHWH and the OT, exacting justice; but, through compassion (Mitleid) I opted for the NT in place of the law, I mean agapē and that God, or that era, maybe: 3rd Torah.* So mercy was later (3-74) applied to my case. But it took the dream to convert my sorrow to Mitleid—upon seeing the sentence of justice imposed: death.

  Without the dream my sorrow (at the loss of Nancy) would have stayed simply sorrow; and the dream was based on the rat experience, which roused vast compassion in me and was the root moksa/religious experience! And it, in turn, was based on the beetle incident when I was in the 4th grade! And in the '60s the Galapagos turtle compassion. At which point the AI voice spoke to me! So my whole development was guided along over the decades since childhood. The first episode was my throwing the cat down the stairs—and feeling sorrow for it. "The slayer sees himself in what he slays": tat tvam asi.

  [88:79] That 2-3-74 and 11-17-80 were genuine I cannot now doubt, having perceived this life history (of progressive moksa) of stages of loss of striving and self (the two are the same). Both Christianity and Buddhism—Brahmanism leads to the same goal, because both are based on compassion. (For India this means the loss of self; for the Christian it means experiencing agape hence God, since agape is his nature.) Hence I can now link Christianity with pan-Indian thought through the "slayer and the slain" compassion-identification; this is one road and it does lead to release. It leads specifically to the perception of reality as one total sentient field, i.e., Valis (Brahman or the cosmic Christ) of which you are a part. So Valis is Brahman, but also yourself and also—hence—Christ, since your self now has given birth to the Godhead, i.e., Christos in you. [...] Thus my entire life led up to 3-74 and seeing Valis, and this in turn led logically to 11-17-80: Christian nirvana. To meeting God (the Christian God of love; viz: 3-74 was Brahman, i.e., Eastern; 11-17-80 was Western and Christian; both are true, and both are reached by the one route of compassion). So 3-74 rep resented the final extinction of my individual self and a return to Brahman (God) and it is the culmination of a lifetime of moksa—compassion experiences that finally released me from karma and Maya; and I saw the God-field.

  I was led along this route (journey) by God. From moksa to moksa. And it's all in VR, in the dying dog in the ditch and Emmanuel's anamnesis and recovery of his true identity.

  Folder 8585

  [85:59] Dream: page of typed final draft of core of exegesis; I pull out page, in center a white, blank circle. No inked impression was made; only the top, bottom and sides are typed:

  What does that signify? Take as an example the coffee filter, which is a 2-dimensional object; when folded, it becomes 3-dimensional. To be folded there must be a void into which it is folded. Is the message of the dream that there exists non-existent reality ("non-is") into which the three-dimensional object must be folded—this non-is void must be for three dimensions to become 4, thus making time "available" (past, present and future superimposed in a newness)?

  Then the intellectual leap I am not making, through fear, is to add the dimension (or realm) of not-is, and describe its characteristics ("the properties of the nonexistent universe"). I must dare to depict the core of is (Being) as a more real real than the is: viz: the is-not. The is-not is more real than the is, which (as I've realized for 22 years) is a spurious dokos. The authentic reality beneath or behind it is the world of what is not—does not merely fail to be, but must not be, in order that it provide a real core to the universe. The is-not has properties, which must be elucidated. Is this the domain of Yin? The Attic Greek space as receptacle of being? Space, not time? Space is real, and the matter partially filling it is not (as real or even real at all). God = void. God = absolute being. Void = absolute being.

  "I hope for his sake God does not exist." Restated: "I hope for our sake God does not exist, because only if he does not exist can he rule (steer) the cosmos." Such early Christian mystics as Erigena described God as "the waste[land] and the void," and thus so did I myself experience him. Was not that an experience with non-being? Existence is a decayed state of reality; that which is has decayed from that which is not. As soon as something is created it has fallen (away from the actuality state of nonbeing).

  Or is all Being merely the periphery of the core which non-being constitutes? To understand this we must elucidate and define the properties of that which is not.

  [85:63] If you believe in the Christian universe—really believe—a miracle (truly) occurs: that much vaster, much richer universe with the many el ements with which it is populated replaces the regular smaller universe. How can this be? [...]

  This precisely is the mystery: a conceptual framework is built; this is Christianity. (I believe this; I believe that. These are doctrines. They are ideas in the mind. Whose mind? My mind. They are a system of notions entertained by me, that Christ lived, that he died, that he rose from the dead, that he ascended to heaven, that he was—etc.) What is the relationship between these doctrines and reality? Are they derived from reality? They are not derived from experience. They are held on faith (pistis). What does "faith" mean? Simply that the ideas cannot be verified.

  Then they become a vast, rich universe. How do ideas or doctrines, any ideas or doctrines, become a universe?

  Perhaps they are about (concerning) a universe, a report about it, a description. I do not think so; I think the body of doctrines, the assembly of ideas, becomes a universe, suddenly.

  We paint a sign reading SOFT DRINK STAND. This is a verbal message, information, a sentence.

  It becomes a soft drink stand. Information has turned into a world.

  Now, I note again and again that 2-3-74 consisted of (was composed of or derived from or related to) my writing. My writing is words, messages, information, ideas, concepts. In 2-3-74 they seem to have become a universe. They became true, but not as true statements; as reality. Originally I thought X and wrote it down and then in 2-3-74 I was in X as world. This means that I must have been in a mind thinking these ideas in such a way that the ideas were transformed into world. Wittgenstein came to the conclusion that a thought is an inner picture serving as analog of an outer thing or event. If he is right, an idea even in the human mind is not words but a Bildnis.86 Suppose you were contained in that mind; would its thoughts not then be images (pictures) and to you real?

  Information into reality; reality into information. Each is a form of the other—but a mind is needed in which the information forms into a picture (Bildnis) and hence reality.

  This is what Philo meant to convey with his doctrine of the logos. A mind larger than the universe in which ideas or information become pictures become reality. The information is not a description (derived analog) of reality; rather, reality comes into existence as the result of the existence of ideas (proving Wittgenstein right).

  Then I suppose that in 2-3-74 I was within the logos (which is the same as the cosmic Christ). So ideas which existed in my own micro mind became (due to the logos) reality for me, external and macro, as the logos mirrored my thoughts (hermetic micro-macrocosm correspondence).

  I am led to the conclusion that in some way that I do not understand my mind—I—was logos-ized, projected into a realm or state of being where I encountered my own prior thought formations as actual reality which were mirror images in a macromind of my own micro mind, as if everything that took place in my mind had a counterpart in the macromind, a sympathetic resonance as if by natural law, a law of correspondences. Enormous spaces extended in which my own prior thought formations took actual shape, and were animated, as if thinking as well is being: definitely still thoughts as well as objects.

  My ideas (prior concepts) existed in space! As objects in vast reaches of space, space more extensive than any space I had ever seen
before; and it was space within me and outside me both!

  [85:91]

  *

  The apostolic age Christians declared in their writing that their secret was that they had overcome physical death. How had they done this? A: once what they had called the "Holy Spirit" had descended on them, each of them could travel up the gene pool line, through the generations, into the past (anamnesis) or future, like a snake crawling up a garden hose with thousands of holes punched in the hose, to emerge anywhere (i.e., at any time and place) the person wanted. Thus "Thomas," who entered the "hose" in Rome c. A.D. 70, emerged in Fullerton, 1974. The clue is the Watson & Crick model of the DNA molecule, which the early Christians pretended was a fish symbol. But what was that which they called the "Holy Spirit"? Christ said it came as a second advocate from God himself. In some way not understood, Christ and the Holy Spirit were identical. They represent the Master Circuit and possess its wisdom.