The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  Right now world (my own will) is not punishing me; it plays games with me and eludes me playfully—a distinct improvement over what it used to do, showing that I have achieved some moksa (liberation, enlightenment). But it is partial. Yet, as these paragraphs show, I am at least partially awake; I have some wisdom. But my renunciation of self (ego) and striving (will) is only partial. Contentment is mine but not joy—not even balance. Until I can joyously give to others what my will wants for itself—only then will I be emancipated from world, my own will coming back at me.

  [75:D-66] Illumination: April Friday night 4:45 A.M., the third, 1981. I saw the Ch'ang Tao9 (3-74). The more it changes the more it is the same, it is always new, always now; it is absolutely self-sufficient. I can at last comprehend it, how in change, ceaseless change—through the dialectic—it is always the same—oh great Ch'ang Tao! I saw you.

  [75:D-67] The great truth is: 2-3-74, my seeing the Tao, and my exegesis, and VALIS, have given me a center (omphalos), which is what I lacked (e.g., in the 60s); this is why my anxiety is gone; I now have a conception of myself, and of myself as an artist and thinker, and of my place and role in society and history—all of which I lacked before I saw the Tao (2-3-74). Thus it can be truly said, I have found the way. I am at peace. But the key word is:

  center (i.e., place. In the Taoist sense.)

  [75:D-93] All at once I think of something God (or "God") revealed to me one time when I was stoned: "You are not the doubter; you are the doubt (itself)" and "This is a road to me, as are all roads if pursued to the end."

  [75:D-129] One time when I was ripped I wrote "God is everywhere. In the music. The cat," etc. My only solution is to see that every literal worldly thing, person, etc., that I loved and lost was in fact God shining through world; world as lens/transduction of God. And that I cannot truly lose God, "yea, I am with you even unto the end." So each time I recover God I really recover all (the people and world things) that I have lost, truly lost as world things, but not as God. Thus God wins me over more and more. More completely and intensely, summing up in and as himself all that I ever had and knew; and yet he is more. Thus, e.g., I discover my analytical proposition. As regards the Wind in the Willows gift of forgetting, God maintains a fine line for me of remembering him and paradoxically mercifully forgetting him. But understanding that I can find him in world over and over again, viz: God discoverable in polyform, but always and only God, however and in what thing experienced: world deconstructed into God always. Thus I am pried away from transitory manifestations which do disappear and am instead bonded to the eternal; but I find it in world and as world, not in withdrawal from world. Thus there is a double motion: pried loose from that which fails; bonded to that which is discoverable always, always capable of being renewed. Again found, unlike people and things seen in themselves: discrete particulars.

  Folder 76

  Early 1981

  [76:E-2] Beyond all the arcana lies the simple truth expressed in my "Chains ... Web" essay and in the story itself. To cease to run is to capitulate. And sooner or later one must cease to run. This moment is the only real moment in which one exists. Everything else is an evasion. In this moment one moves deliberately toward one's fate and fights it, and as a result, one truly lives for the first time or dies; it is sein vs. das nichts. What I call the heroic deed is, in that instant, everything. Thus I am an ontologist and an existentialist and I am willing to risk extinction in order to try authentically to be, since in this moment one has only the choice between extinguishing oneself voluntarily or fighting. I chose to fight and won, and what I won was my own soul.

  [76:E-13] Notes on "Chains ... Web." The fate that the Christian does not run from or dread will (he knows) defeat him. He knows absolutely, with total certitude; this is the very essence of his ability not to run from it. Because he also knows he can't run from it, (1) it will defeat him; and (2) he can't escape it. So he is doubly doomed; its power to destroy him is absolute in two respects: the postulate "it will destroy him" derives from this double source. The double source makes this fate what it is. It is not a threat—not a lethal threat, even. It is something more.

  [76:E-14] I am currently of the opinion that (1) there is a connection between original authentic Christianity through Gnosticism to Heidegger; and (2) that 2-3-74 was this particular experience; viz: the inauthentic state that Heidegger describes is the "thrown-ness" into the "fremd" that Gnosticism describes; there follows, then, a series of dire transformations by the "thrown into the alien world" person trying to cope; I comprehend this as flight and evasion from fate (heimarmene), which is a sense that this alien state/world into which one has been thrown torments now and eventually kills (causes nonbeing, das nicht). The unconscious apperception of this creates angst (dread). This running to evade nonbeing manifesting itself as fate generates a pressure time, in which—by which—the person is driven more than driving; that is, he both runs and is made to run; he is caused to flee more than volitionally fleeing. Thus there is caused an endless process of becoming that never turns into being itself; there is no true now—he is projected always into a dreaded next; he is not really here and now for him; he must run into the future and yet paradoxically away from the future; he both runs toward and away from. Thus he is split. Part of him reaches inauthentically into the future to monitor it for peril—he cannot afford ever to ignore the future since it contains his fate which will kill him—and part of him looks away from the future for the same reason; this split may be the basis of schizophrenia. He must both notify himself of what he sees in the future and obscure what he sees from himself. This is another version of the split. But worst of all is—not that he must involve himself continually in the future out of apprehension, while also avoiding it, fearing to move into it, trying in fact to halt time (since time contains his fate) but he fails to be in the now, which is where reality is, and this is what most inhibits Sein; he has to be eternally becoming because he must extend himself eternally into the not yet. What I see in all this is that his sense that this alien world he has been thrown into will eventually ineluctably annihilate him is correct and he knows it is correct; this is not a delusion, this sense of impending destruction that will take away what little being he has. That time might increase or even complete his being does not occur to him because (and here the Gnostic perception is vital) this is an alien world into which he has been thrown against his will; i.e., he is helpless: he did not decide to be here, and the more he reaches frantically into the future (while simultaneously running from the future) the faster time "flows" (or the faster he moves through it). Thus the moment, the now, escapes him perpetually and he has no life he can call his own. But he must never reveal to himself this fact—about his inevitable future doom—lest he disintegrate utterly; again he is split. So he has no idea what he is doing or why, and he is enigmatic to himself; so he is too and for himself as alien as world is to him; he is as if thrown into an alien self on top of everything else!

  As I say, the only solution to this is the Christian solution of what I call total capitulation to this fate and an acknowledgment that it cannot be avoided; it will come and it will destroy him. Thus he ceases running, and lives now not future; but at the moment he does this he knows that this anticipated doom exists—so in the normal course of life this sense of the future becoming the now only occurs—if it occurs at all—when the impending doom ceases to be future and is perceived as now: at which point anticipatory dread becomes logically total fear. However (as Heidegger points out) this apotheosis of dread, this being-in-death, carries with it the possibility of authentic Sein.

  [76:E-19] It is world that must change to accommodate us, not us to accommodate world. This is such a critical point that its implications simply beggar description. This world is alien to us; it must change to be familiar to us, not us to fit into it.

  Folder 84

  APRIL 20, 1981

  [84:5] Pay-off:

  The introjection of Christ into the system
is certainly the epitome of the adding of ex nihilo newness, of revitalizing creation as if from outside. Thus the term "Christ" has to refer to any and all newness choices wherever and whenever they occur; "Christ" is the zero-one binary disjunctive event per se, and so is always now and always here. We see it and understand that we see (and experience) Christ, and this is newness, re-creation (in an unending process of creation). Christ never arises/occurs as a result of the past, as an effect of antecedent causes; he is always born "from outside." Hence his epiphany can never be induced or predicted (by definition). Christ is that which does not follow mechanically: he always invades world. To see, then, that Causality is not observed, that the "effect" is in fact not an effect at all—of its Cause—but is ex nihilo new is to see—literally, not symbolically—Christ. Hence where there is Christ it is always the case that there has been "a perturbation of the reality field," something acting on it, intruding on it, invading it, "from outside." In terms of mechanical cause-and-effect Christ can never be said to be a normal event derived from the antecedent system.*

  Without these periodic insertions the system would run down; it would lose shape, organization and vitality. Cause-and-effect, then, taken in itself, is a losing game. The only thing that Christ can be said to be a result of—Christ as an event in the reality field—is the need of this event. It is physically, mechanically causeless; it is absolutely teleological. Efficient causation has no bearing on it and will never yield it up. (Here Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is totally wrong: world is not spontaneously converging into the Point Omega; what he calls "Point Omega" is something done ceaselessly to world, an endless invasion.) Wherever the effect is correctly seen to exceed its cause (which is then by definition not its cause) there is Christ. Conversely, wherever effect follows cause actually, there he is not. Christ, then, is an event, something that occurs in and to the reality field; Christ is not a person as men are persons. Christ is the beginning of the universe all over again, as a repeated event.

  [84:8] Here is the puzzle of VALIS. In VALIS I say, I know a madman who imagines that he saw Christ; and I am that madman. But if I know that I am a madman I know that in fact I did not see Christ. Therefore I assert nothing about Christ. I say only that I am not mad. But if I say only that, then I have made no mad claim; therefore I am not mad. And the regress begins again and continues forever. Something has been asserted, but what is it? Does it have to do with Christ or only with myself? This paradox was known in antiquity; the pre-Socratics propounded it. A man says, "All Cretans are liars." When an inquiry is made as to who this man is, it is determined that he was born in Crete. What, then, has he asserted? Anything at all? Is this the semblance of knowledge or a form—a strange form—of knowledge itself? Zeno, the Sophists in general, saw paradox as a way of conveying knowledge—paradox, in fact, as a way of arriving at conclusions. This is known, too, in Zen Buddhism. It sometimes causes a strange jolt or leap in the person's mind; something happens, an abrupt comprehension, as if out of nowhere, called satori. The paradox does not tell; it points. It is a sign, not the thing pointed to. That which is pointed to must arise ex nihilo in the mind of the person. The paradox, the koan tells him nothing; it wakes him up. This only makes sense if you assume something very strange: we are asleep but do not know it. At least not until we wake up.

  Folder 90

  APRIL

  [90:1]10 Enclosed is a carbon of what may be a resolution of my seven years of attempting to construct a model of reality; by "reality" I mean God in or God and the universe: what Erigena called natura. The solution came to me in a series of recent sleep revelations, that is, hypnogogic and hypnopompic insights where I actually saw how the system works. (Universe and God regarded, as Spinoza does, as one and the same.) My model is that of a computer or computer-like entity—well, look at the enclosed page; it is pretty much complete.

  [90:2] April 15, 1981. Sleep insight.

  Hartshorne—pantheism—the EB macro. A. N. Whitehead's process deity.* We are within it (the MMSK), as interconnections, but organic model is incorrect. It is a signaling system, mutually adjusting (this is what Pythagoras saw). 0-1 flicker rate (misinterpreted by me as time frames); actually it's binary. Tries out a false move (0), then corrects to 1 which is actualized in/as the next discrete "frame." Has the effect of separate frames due to the off-on pulsation; discrete: isn't/is, nonbeing/being. The system shuts off every trillionth of a second (0). These are decisions. After each off (0) when it switches back on to 1 the "frame" (reality) is different, in terms of internal arrangement, adjustment, mutual adjustment, interaction/interconnection, as information flows through its circuits.

  Boehme: yes-no. Hartshorne 0-1. Quantitative (0-1) converted to qualitative by spatiotemporal reality itself; that is, quantitative information is poured into material reality within which and by which it is converted into qualitative information.

  While it's off, reality ceases to be. When it comes back on it is slightly different. It (the system) doesn't transmit a zero bit; it (the system) ceases to be. This is when it makes a tentative move which had been canceled in favor of a better move; at every junction (trillionth of the second, flicker rate) it discards an inferior move in favor of a better one; hence Leibniz's view that "this is the best of all possible worlds" (this is a rapid selection process). This is how a computer works. The zero position is the void; hence when I conceive of God as Valis I am only getting the 1; I need also the void, the zero. To comprehend/apperceive/envision the void is to envision the other phase (zero phase) of the flicker binary pulsation, the sum of the two phases being the totality. Thus the Muslims are correct; the universe is destroyed "every day" (actually every trillionth of the second) "and re-created."11 But what is interesting to me is that the way I conceive of this, all its decisions are made during the "spaces" that we are totally unaware of. It comes back on, back into being, back to the 1 phase when it has tried out a faulty solution and has substituted better (the best possible?) instead, which is the next "time frame." Thus its decision-making processes, i.e., its thinking, and its nonbeing phase, lies outside our awareness. The initial false move that it tries out during its zero phase is Boehme's no, and the 1 or on phase is Boehme's yes. So my envisioning is essentially Boehme's, updated in terms of computers and information processing systems. The similarity to the Taoist alternation of yin and yang is very obvious.

  [90:13] What is probably most important of all is that my binary arborizing disjunctive decision-making universe system—the disclosure of which I regard as an essentially new disclosure, although as a fact it itself may not be new—it is, I think, absolutely in accord with the very high and penetrating conception of the revolutionary role of the cosmic Christ in fundamentally transforming the nature of the world order. This is nothing short of astonishing, that radical mystical Pauline Christianity and a very radical modern quantum mechanics computer indeterminate unified field reality view turned out to be basically compatible or in fact even identical! The two converge (at least in my theorizing) totally; all at once there is a lightning swift confluence of my separate streams of thought: Christianity and, well, philosophy-metaphysics-epistemology, whatever; all else, really, than Christianity; I suddenly have one overview which is (1) basically new and original; and (2) subsumes everything Christian and non-Christian into one daring structure. What is more, this structure will adequately account for my apperception of what I call Valis, both in me and outside me, back in 3-74. So at this point I have synthesized my various streams of thought into a higher gestalt and no longer have to vacillate back and forth between Christianity and non-Christianity, which is reason to suppose that I have finally hit on a model that truly represents, conceptually, what I experienced in the spring of 1974 and has puzzled me for over seven years.

  All of a sudden a titanic idea (insight?) has struck me. Valis was out side me in or as the external reality field; and Valis was in me, in my mind, blended with my mind, or, perhaps, even as my mind. What if the true situation is:
this is what is meant by "Christ consciousness" and it works this way: Christ enters you (never mind at this point how; up the optic nerve or some kind of alchemical hierarchy of opposites, etc., etc.); anyhow, this "Christ consciousness" which is in fact the Second Advent makes it possible for the first time in human history for human beings to discard the modem of causation (which I have shown, at least to my own satisfaction, dates back to Babylon, is in fact the astral determinism, or Fate or ananke, etc., of the ancient world) as the basic ontological structuring category—by which world is ordered, arranged, understood—and this Christ consciousness permits (again for the first time in human history) a much more accurate and acutely qualitatively different experience of reality ... in which causality is replaced by an understanding of, apperception of, realization of, whatever, of what I call binary forking decision-making, a choosing system, the no-yes choice exercised volitionally, sentiently; this was always the case with world-in-itself (Kant's Ding-an-sich) but there was no way by which humans could apperceive (comprehend, envision) it before. And this radically transformed experience (Dasein) of reality, a way of being-in-the-world, of participating in shaping world (the observer participant), had to wait until such discoveries and realizations as quantum mechanics, indeterminacy, unified field theory, plus Taoism—all that good new stuff such as Capra talks about ... but anyhow, the leap across to this new way of Dasein is the second advent, and what occurs in our minds, our brains, our heads; and yet (paradoxically) it refers to something actually "out there" in world, external to us, a way in which reality functions in itself; so this new radical quantum leap upward view is not just subjective—well, okay; reality hasn't changed; our way of being-in-reality has changed, had to wait, had to evolve over the many centuries. I mean, if Koestler and Capra et al. can equate the post-Newtonian Dasein (comprehension of reality) with Taoism, why can't I equate it with Pauline Christian mysticism (which is exactly what I've done!).* And then as a third ele ment we can bring in Heidegger and talk about Sein, authentic being, and what I call a spatial reality rather than a temporal reality, etc. And I then trace Heidegger back to Gnosticism and from there once again to Paul, who is highly thought of by the Gnostics. And there is no need to exclude Taoism, because indeed a yin-yang dialectic is involved ... and we get to keep a causal synchronicity, and it just all comes together and is liberating ... and we get to throw in computer stuff, which relates back to Taoism via my binary dialectic—but most of all, as I say, this internal event (Valis in me) permits the comprehension (Dasein) of what may in fact always (or for centuries) have been there in world but we didn't possess the inner equipment to comprehend/apprehend it.