The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  With the death of all he loves behind him (Gloria's death stands for loss of Kathy and Stephanie, Francie, etc.), including the death of God (the child Sophia), Fat resolves his life into a search for the Savior; this is the plot of VALIS. Its Kerygma; VALIS' message is not the parousia but pistis.

  And this is me (as H. Fat), rendered into fiction forever. And yet the real truth is that I embody doubt, not faith; and yet, when I as I am am rendered into art by me the artist, doubt—absolute doubt—becomes or is seen as absolute faith, as Fat searches for the Savior, while I sit here night after night not believing. Which is the truth? VALIS enters the info flow of the macromind, so it—not I—will survive. And, as Plato said, that which is eternal alone is real.

  ***

  [60:A-37] Here is the ultimate truth: the fool sees Christ. H. Fat is a fool; and I say (but it is not true), "I am H. Fat"; but in truth he has pistis, I have doubt. But people will believe the artistic version.

  (1) In VALIS I depict H. Fat finding Christ.

  (2) In VALIS I depict H. Fat as a fool.

  (3) ∴ he did find Christ, for the fool finds Christ. Am I that fool? That is my wish fulfillment fantasy: me with faith—i.e., me the fool, not the scholar. Now all I see is my own hallucinated world—hence not God. Then we are in purgatory; it must be so. And in 2-74 I was sprung.

  I perceive Ed Meskys blind and I grieve, and that grief is the purpose of the universe—its existence proves that God exists. That grief is higher even than agape; it was spoken of only in the secret literature, and it has no name. Power-wisdom-agape, so far, and now a fourth disclosure: this "grief" that I feel—it is to agape as agape is to wisdom. The Urgrund dialectic yes/no has evolved up one more notch.

  I broke into the actual world, saw God; and now I'm back in this God damn hallucination of my own (purgatory). No wonder I'm disconsolate; no wonder I get ripped. To see him and then to lose him—what I need is pistis; I need to be H. Fat. "Jack Isidore" has metamorphosed from caricature of myself to my spiritual self, along the Parsifal—guileless fool—axis. Everything else I wrote tonight is bullshit, but not this. Jack Isidore, me as the fool, found Christ. I must become ∴ Jack Isidore if I am to be saved; I must model myself on him, and suffer the consequences—they are heavy, if you are the fool. This is the passion of Christ: the punishment of the fool.

  [60:A-44]

  Folder 75

  Early 1981

  [75:D-1] 3-74, Valis, was the mens dei. I comprehended it. It's a strange thing to be addicted to, comprehending God's mind—I must be a Sufi; by "beauty" (the essence of God) read "pleasure"—because the why as to why I do it, it is because it gives me pleasure.

  [75:D-2] I've finally found a Q I don't imagine I have an answer for: why is Kathy more beautiful than the perfect (sic) beauty of God? Maybe even St. Sophia can't answer this; hence, as a result, we have imperfect creation, for which no rational reason can be given, even by God. This is the ultimate mystery, even God can't penetrate it. How can something unique, transitory and imperfect be more beautiful than God/heaven?

  [75:D-3] It's all told in VALIS: losing Kathy (Gloria), and getting God as a substitute. Really, the story—and it is my life we are talking about—is very simple, when you stumble onto it. And I don't say if the substitute is an adequate solution (i.e., as good, better, not as good); I just reported it neutrally. But the fact is, it's not good enough. Okay, then we will apply the hermetic solution—which is what is found in Divine Invasion: Linda Fox and Xena are Kathy. And also God! Manny, alone, is not.

  Hello heartbreak. Joe Gideon. Tears first treats it. Then Scanner. Then VALIS. Then Divine Invasion, a projected answer, theoretical (i.e., I didn't find it); only DI alone of the four novels is not autobiographical. Shows I know what the answer is (I just can't find it).

  As an artist I have been successful: I'd encompassed it in the four novels (and The Golden Man intro); but in life I can't. The final novel is fantasy.

  [75:D-9] I have been looking over Scanner, the intro to The Golden Man and VALIS. The continuity is pain, emotional pain; this goes back to Tears. It is obvious that I have no defense against pain, that I am a—lunatic, one driven mad by—not pain—but by a comprehension of pain (like the Buddha). Comprehension of pain (spiritual and mental, especially) is the basis of my writing, as is my awareness of the frailty of life and how easily it passes over into death. Thus, although I have been driven insane by my comprehension, I am not cut off from reality; hence also I am a saint. And I write very well; I get it all down on paper. What does this add up to? Okay—I have at last carefully formulated an explanation (as Jim Haynes pointed out); I give my answer. It is an absurd answer, an attempt to ex plain what cannot be explained (pain, loss, grief and death). Hence it reveals this: these matters cannot be rationally explained; if they could be, I would have done so (I am smart and persistent). Hence, one can infer that our situation—thrown-ness—is an irrational one, a point I consider in my explanation; hence I expose the ontological irrationality of dasein, and thus stigmatize all philosophical and theological systems including my own. We are back—led back—to the raw brute fact of pain, loss, grief, suffering. Perhaps more than anyone else I reveal the irrational depths underlying reality. My ideological solution is a failure; if I believe in it I have gone mad. And I state that, too: that I am mad. This only reinforces the relentless picture of irrationality; my madness is merely a piece of it, allied to a greater madness. This is a new and singular worldview. What solution do I propose that works? (Inasmuch as my Gnostic system obviously does not; its failure proves its own premise, that of underlying irrationality and irreality and the failure of reason and of systems.) Humor, love and beauty. And a firm rootedness in the particular, in the ordinary. It is in the ordinary that my real solution is found—in diametric contradistinction to my bizarre and weird system. Beyond and above my sensitivity to pain and my unwillingness to avoid it (avoiding it would be evil madness, and the rest of us are guilty of it to some degree, contrasted with me) I am a saint. This is of little use or importance. My insanity, given an insane world, is, paradoxically, a facing of reality, and this is sane; I refuse to close my eyes and ears. So Y equals Ȳ, as Pat says; our world and our proper role in it is paradoxical. The only question is, which kind of madness will we choose? To deny and avoid the irrational reality? I am proof that everyone else is doing this. We are, then, all mad, but I, uniquely, choose to go mad while facing pain, not mad while denying pain. These are simply different paths—but mine hurts more; it is not necessarily better—it is more a curiosity. Why would I choose this route? Because I am a saint. I have kept my soul—as, now and then, an occasional reader realizes. But I have not yet proven that there is a soul; thus I may have chosen my route in vain. No known religion encompasses this, even Buddhism. Very strange. Little can be said for my point of view, except that it can't be logically demolished; if it could be I would have done so. Thus I am in touch with reality. So, then, in what sense am I insane? I am insane in that I continue to face the truth without the ability to come up with a workable answer. All I have done is (1) indicate the real situation; (2) show that all the known answers, systems of thought, are false. Again, I have shown that the problem cannot be solved or explained, only fled from. This is very disturbing; I indict the whole universe and ourselves as irrational, myself included. I really do not know anything in terms of the solution; I can only state the problem. No other thinker has ever stated a problem and so miserably failed to solve it in human histories; human thought is, basically, problem-solving, not problem stating. Again, my very failure to come up with a plausible solution—even when I try—simply verifies the magnitude of the problem, rather than impugning my problem-solving faculties. It shows that what we normally regard as solution-systems really evade the reality and complexity and magnitude of the problem: fundamental irrationality giving rise to pain, grief, loss and death. Thus I am a very dangerous person. Again, my very efforts to produce a solution are alarming because they so
blatantly fail. My failure is the failure of all mankind (to find a solution or explanation). The fault is not mine.

  I can say no more. What I have done may be good, it may be bad. But the reality that I discern is the true reality; thus I am basically analytical, not creative; my writing is simply a creative way of handling analysis. I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel and story writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception.* The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation.† Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature of reality, and, for them, my corpus of writing is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an investigation and presentation, analysis and response and personal history. My audience will always be limited to these people. It is bad news for them that, indeed, I am "slowly going crazy in Santa Ana, Calif.," because this reinforces our mutual realization that no answer, no explanation of this mysterious reality, is forthcoming.8

  This is the thrust and direction of modern theoretical physics, as Pat pointed out long ago. I reached it in the 50s. Where this will ultimately go I can't say, but so far in all these years no one has come forth to answer the questions I have raised. This is disturbing. But—this may be the beginning of a new age of human thought, of new exploration. I may be the start of something promising: an early and incomplete explorer. It may not end with me.

  What I have shown—like the Michelson Morley experiment—is that our entire world view is false; but, unlike Einstein, I can provide no new theory that will replace it. However, viewed this way, what I have done is extraordinarily valuable, if you can endure the strain of not knowing, and knowing you do not know. My attempt to know (VALIS) is a failure qua explanation. But, as further exploration and presentation of the problem, it is priceless. And, to repeat, my absolute failure to concoct a workable explanation is highly significant—i.e., that in this I have failed. It indicates that we are collectively still far from the truth. Emotionally, this is useless. But epistemologically it is priceless. I am a unique pioneer ... who is hopelessly lost. And the fact that no one yet can help me is of extraordinary significance!*

  Someone must come along and play the role of Plato to my Socrates.

  The problem as I see it is that Plato was 180 degrees wrong; the eidos, the abstract and perfect, does not become the particular, the imperfect; rather, the Q should be, "How does the particular, the unique, the imperfect, the local, become the abstract, the eidos, the universal?" We must study particulars, the weeds and debris of the alley; the answer is there: I saw the MMSK and it works the opposite way from how Plato saw it; he saw the eide as ontologically primary, and existing prior to the particulars. But I saw the particulars creating eidei (or "phylogons" as I called them); thus permanent eternal reality is built up on and based on the flux realm; all Western metaphysics is 180 degrees off. [...]

  In 2-74 my mind understood, and my attention was directed to a squashed dead bird in the alley.

  The answer is in the imperfect, the particular, not in heaven, not in the perfect abstract form. Then the particular, although transitory, is not epiphenomenal! I have bipolarized these two. Strange. It is the transitory unique particular which is real, and yet it vanishes; well, I saw where it goes; all the particulars feed in conceptually to reticulate and arborize and complete the eidei. This is where the truth lies. This is where the answer is. Somehow, the transitory particulars do not in fact ever perish, but are permanently arranged conceptually—this is my one big discovery (and it isn't in VALIS).

  My dope insight of last night: If and when Kathy can be rendered into geometric form she can be distributed throughout reality and hence will be—become—permanent; this is how the particulars are stored. And this is what Plato calls the forms. [...] It has to do with memory storage; the "form" is a way to store permanently a whole lot—millions, billions—of unique particulars.

  This is it! And I saw it.

  [75:D-21] I started last night with a complete sense of failure and wound up with this as the one true thing I figured out of importance:

  "The entire universe, possibly, is in the invisible process of turning into the Lord."

  What is new is my impression that the macrobrain came first—i.e., the physical universe—and then it began to think; it generated the macromind, not the other way around. So Valis is a spontaneous product of the universe, not its creator. It's as if at a certain point in the evolution of human info processing (e.g.) a mind came into existence. [...] This would be why there are no reports of my experience in history; physical reality including humans are evolving into a gestalt that abruptly generates a meta-mind. (Reasoning from particulars to eidei, as in my argument supra; i.e., all Western metaphysics is 180 degrees backward.)

  So my meta-abstraction did not just cause me to perceive Valis but, rather, caused Valis to occur in and around me, and as a result of it occurring, I perceived it. (Sophia: "Man is holy. Man is the only true God. This is the new news I bring you.") It (Valis) was not there until the (my) meta-ab straction generated it, virtually ex nihilo. And it evolved it (me) very rapidly; and it embraced the outer world because we are not discrete but are one continuum or "reality field"; thus Valis is a "perturbation in the reality field."

  [75:D-33]

  [75:D-37] We just see the field, the "iron filings," the carrier; we do not see the modulation.

  That 15 seconds last night when I was cut off from memory, comprehension and knowledge of God was too terrible; it was worse than going mad or dying. If that is the only way that I can be taught what it is that has been given me, so be it. My supreme possession is my comprehension of God; it is to my comprehension of music as my comprehension of music is to world as such. World is to music as music is to God. Since I was in the sixth grade I have had my comprehension of music; since 3-74 of God; and it has grown steadily ... I realize that now. My best shot is:

  The bells I heard in 3-74: space (the void). Beethoven's music encloses that space (as I've noted before). He converts space into time and time into space as one thing: space-time, and makes it as a unitary "thing" perceptible to us. It is motion (i.e., time) in space; audible space. Space with a mysterious nonverbal identity/presence filling it, moving in it. Movement as structure: being in nonbeing. The byss and the abyss. Plus #3: information, i.e., "I ... am." Anokhi. That which moves through/in the space is information, i.e., consciousness; it is conscious, changing eternity.

  [75:D-52] Thus there is an irrational basis out of which reality is created (rather than: "the basis of reality is irrational" or "reality is irrational"). This basis is the need for reality to exist; hence any living creature, since it is/possesses primarily a will, must be cosmogenitor in order to survive. Will comes first; world as a result. Any and every living creature is "God" then, creating and maintaining reality to satisfy its need to survive. There is no theoretical upper limit to its power to generate and affect (change) reality. The primordial substrate is the will of the individual creature, but this will is not rational. Thus its reality is contradictory and often unpleasant (punishing). The creature's will routinely comes back at it as objective world—world that is its own creation but not recognized as such. World, the product of its will, fights the creature and subdues/defeats it. [...] So the ultimate struggle is for the creature to subdue its own will. It can't do this through power; this is what the will has available to it: power. Nor will cunning work; the will is cunning. Only the Christian renunciation of self will work, in which the other, the Thou, is construed as more valuable than self. This is when agape enters as the solution and the key. Something not oneself must be esteemed over self; this defeats the will; the will must not triumph: it must be defeated. Its triumph amounts to the defeat of the creatu
re as a rational center: defeat of will defeats the coercive power of world over you. (World is your own will coming back at you as an adversary.) The harder you strive the more powerful world becomes. Here enters "Mitleids Hochste Macht," compassion's highest power to defeat the will-as-world. (Your own will is experienced as world.) Anhedonism, asceticism, self-denial, self-repression, stoicism, will not work; only willing, joyous agape (which is a joy allied with the most intense sorrow possible; viz: the passion becoming the resurrection). Even duty will not suffice. Paul is right: agape is everything, not because it is ethically or morally superior but because it overpowers the will, hence world, hence karma/astral determinism/fate/heimarmene. (These are how we encounter our own will.) Allied to this is the concept of meekness or smallness, which is a tactic to diminish striving.

  [...]

  The Buddha was on the right path in that he understood the problem, the cause of suffering; but it is not nonattachment but agape that is the solution. One does not succeed by ceasing to be attached to what one loves (craves) but by caring more that someone else should have it; thus I do not give away x; I give it away to someone else, while still treating it as valuable, but I treat that person as more valuable—so the Buddha was partly there—partly but not the whole way. In this act one deprives world of its power of punishment: the will returning with a vengeance, which prideful people do not realize.