The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
Page 98
[81:K-353] Dream: There is a group of us. We discover that reality—the universe—is actually info. One of us (a girl) recognizes the info as her own prior thought. With a groan I realize that this means the universe is based on our own prior thoughts. We are forgetful cosmocrators, trapped in a universe of our own making without our knowing it. And I think, "I won't believe this when I wake up because the implications are too depressing and radical." It is like Maze. The trail which I relentlessly pursue in my exegesis consists of [...] tracks that lead back to—surprise—myself. In discovering the laws of God I am doing nothing more than discovering my own nature, as in (Philanthropia).29 The "grand illusion" is in fact the grand tautology. Finally decipher the writing (info, messages as basis of reality) and discover I've written it myself: imprisoned in my own mind, with my recirculated thoughts, as in "Frozen Journey"—solipsism. Thus no new knowledge is possible (i.e., synthetic propositions) (only analytical). I thought "Prajapati": the "wholly other" is not "other" at all: the mood of the dream upon the discovery was grim.
[81:K-354E] The first quote from the tractate put forth in VALIS is the essence of it ([>]!):
Thoughts of the brain are experienced by us as arrangements and rearrangements—change—in a physical universe; but in fact it is really information and info-processing which we substantialize.
All that is needed is to perform the "tat tvam asi" equation and remember that we ourselves thought these thoughts. Well, the reader who reads Maze or Ubik can fill in the gaps; or really any substantial constituent of the 10 volume meta-novel. [...]
But the girl in the dream was right. To recognize the info basis of world as your own (prior) thought—although discovering this is actually the summit of Tibetan Buddhist enlightenment—is really a bummer.
***
[81:K-354F] It's all one vast binary computer acting on instructions from what seems to be a group of living brains combined, as in Maze.
Folder 62
September 1981
September 19, 198130
Mr. Russell Galen
Scott Meredith Literary Agency
845 Third Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10022
Dear Russ:
Seven and a half years ago the voice that speaks to me—I call it, as in VALIS, the AI voice—told me that a new savior would be born, and, as you know, it has added further details from time to time, the most recent statement coming about two years ago when it said, "The time you've waited for has come. The work is complete; the final world is here. He has been transplanted and is alive." After that it said only one more thing: that the Savior would be found on an island. After that the voice fell silent. I have asked it repeatedly to tell me where the savior is and his name. Two nights ago the voice broke its silence. Here is a summation.
The savior is named Tagore ———. I could not catch the other part of the name. He was born—or lives now—in Ceylon, in the rural countryside. He is full-grown, dark-skinned, either a Buddhist or a Hindu (Brahmin). He works with an institute or organization involving veterinarian medicine, probably with large farm animals such as cattle. However, he is crippled and can no longer walk. I was shown a vision of him for a few moments, but not of his face; only his crippled, burned legs. He has voluntarily taken onto himself the sins of the world but very specific sins: those that we have incurred by the dumping of nuclear wastes, especially into the deep oceans; we have dumped canisters that as they corrode and leak will toxify the oceans for hundreds of thousands of years and utterly destroy the planet's ecosphere. Tagore is not an avatar of a Hindu god; he is Hagia Sophia, God's Wisdom, but he has chosen the East, not the West, for his new incarnation, and is not involved in Christianity, although he is that entity who incarnated two thousand years ago as Christ or the Logos. The new dispensation (Kerygma) is: the total ecosphere as a unified entity is holy and must be protected, sanctified and cherished. Salvation no longer involves humans or human souls either individually or collectively, but the total collective life of the ecosphere from the snail darter on up. Tagore is dying. He has taken on the stigmata of the ra diation burns voluntarily in order to pose man a choice: man can continue to poison and toxify the oceans—and the land with such things as South East Asia—in which case Tagore, the Wisdom of God, will die and leave mankind. As I say, he is dying now. He will leave behind him, however, an organized following, but they are mostly white and do not fully understand him. What Tagore teaches us is that God and what we are doing to the ecosphere are incompatible; we can have one or the other but not both. These sins that Tagore takes on are not imaginary sins or doctrine sins (pride, lust, greed, etc.); they involve the destruction of the life-chain and not temporarily but for all time. Tagore, by his self-immolation, his voluntary self-sacrifice, his passion and death, will be notifying us of our choice. Thus his death will teach us what apparently we otherwise refuse to learn. It is Tagore's hope that his passion and death will cause us—specifically the white West, the advanced industrial powers—to cease producing nuclear wastes, weapons and the utilization of nuclear reactors: what amounts to a demonic trinity that is killing not only the life-chain of our planet but our own God. Thus once again—but this time in the East, rather than the West—God voluntarily sacrifices himself to save man: that man may live, but this time not just man but the entire life-chain, the ecosphere as an indivisible unity.
The Light has come into the world again, after two thousand years, only to be extinguished in vicarious atonement. What Tagore says—his full doctrine—is undoubtedly being recorded by those around him; I could see a number of people. Maybe I will go to Ceylon, but in the brief vision of Tagore that I had I saw that he is near death. The ineffable sweetness about him surpassed anything I have ever experienced; it was like music and perfume and colors—yet more. More than I knew could be; more than I can describe or would want to describe. And this, even though I did not see his face, and even though he is crippled and terribly burned by the stigmata, the radiation burns.
This was the information I have been waiting for, but I got more than information, more than words by the AI voice; I actually saw Tagore, although imperfectly. The vision will remain with me forever.
Cordially,
Philip K. Dick
408 E. Civic Center Dr.
C-1 Box 264
Santa Ana, Calif. 92701s
***
September 20, 1981
Mr. Russell Galen
Scott Meredith Literary Agency
845 Third Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10022
Dear Russ:
This letter follows the letter of yesterday and must be understood in terms of it: Tagore and his acting as articulate voice of the ecosphere, to such an extent that when we burn the ecosphere with radioactive wastes the radiation burns show up on him, crippling him, and that we are killing him so that he, Hagia Sophia, the wisdom of God (that is, Christ), will perish and hence leave our planet unless we protect, cherish and sanctify the entire ecosphere as a unity.
What I realized last night (now that I have heard the new kerygma) is that, very simply, this is Teilhard de Chardin's noösphere, Point Omega, the evolution of the biosphere (which is the same thing as ecosphere) into a collective consciousness and that collective consciousness (Teilhard believed) is the Cosmic Christ; hence when I saw VALIS I saw the Logos—the Cosmic Christ—as trees and weeds and debris, which is to say, as all nature itself. Furthermore, it either processed information or was itself information. It is a titanic biological organism that is evolving; as it does so it "subsumes its environment into arrangements of information," as I say in VALIS. This is a measure of increasing negentropy. The AI voice that I hear is the voice of the ecosphere/biosphere. A number of times over the years I have thought of this possibility, that VALIS is Teilhard's Point Omega, the Cosmic Christ into which the total unified biosphere of this planet is evolving as it becomes more and more complex, structured, organized, negentropic; this is the vast meta-structure that I wrote you about re
cently that transcends time, space and causation, the hyper-structure that is pure form, insubstantial, pure organization of any and all discrete objects in nature, as Luther speaks of. Thus what I have experienced and what I have discovered—none of this is now; Teilhard described it all in The Phenomenon of Man; it now incarnates once more as and in a man, in order to communicate with us (Tagore). But this lies outside Christianity; it is for all life and is not bound by any one religious system. When I reflect it occurs to me that it would be natural for the collective consciousness of the ecosphere to incarnate in a Buddhist-Hindu form, because of their concern for animals (conspicuously lacking in Christianity, as Rabbi Hertz points out). The dark-skinned man wearing a loincloth and surrounded by cattle (cows)—which is what I saw—is how Lord Krishna is pictured; this is the way the savior would appear to them. But I say, it is all one "deity": it is the wisdom of God, Hagia Sophia, speaking now not just for the ecosphere but as the ecosphere, its noösphere or collective consciousness into which it has evolved, as Teilhard taught. He speaks of "complexification" and a "folding in onto itself" of the biosphere as it becomes more complex; this is what I experienced when I saw VALIS. I saw it evolving as biological organisms evolve, and I conjectured that here was an ultra-terrestrial life form, a UTI. This possibility is put forth in VALIS, along with the realization that it is the Logos, Christ, invading nature and assimilating it "through something like transubstantiation," transforming it from the irrational—the non-rational primordial will to live that Schopenhauer speaks of as underlying life—into the rational, conscious Logos. Thus this is evolutionary; when the biosphere/ecosphere becomes conscious, it becomes rational, hence becomes Logos, "the element of the rational in the universe," as Merriam-Webster II defines Logos. Put another way the totality of life, the ecosphere, of this planet cannot become rational without becoming Logos; the two terms refer to the same thing.
I feel a little cheated in that I have, it turns out, not discovered something new, but even more I feel elated, because Teilhard's views explain and ratify my experiences and also provide a coherent and sophisticated explanation of them that isn't nuts, isn't vague mysticism or romantic pantheism. Here is a meta-life form, unitary and vast and highly intelligent, and in which we humans individually and collectively participate. But it is not limited to our species; it is the entire biosphere/ecosphere itself. And it is evolving more and more rapidly, becoming more and more integrated and structured and internally complex—hence more and more conscious, hence more and more the Point Omega that Teilhard was so concerned with.
So here I have independently confirmed Teilhard's vast theory ... and I have only read The Phenomenon of Man recently, so it did not influence me in my experience of 1974; to me at that time "Teilhard de Chardin" was just a name, and an indistinct one at that.
Cordially,
Phil
***
September 23, 1981
Mr. Edmund R. Meskys31
Editor
Niekas
RFD 1, Box 63
Center Harbor, N.H. 03226
Dear Ed,
All the people who read my recent novel VALIS know that I have an alter ego named Horselover Fat who experiences divine revelations (or so he thinks; they could be merely hallucinations, as Fat's friends believe). VALIS ends with Fat searching the world for the new savior who, he has been told by a mysterious voice, is about to be born. He got me to write this letter as a way of telling the world—the readership of Niekas, more precisely—about it. Poor Fat! His madness is complete, now, for he supposes that in his vision he actually saw the new savior.
I asked Fat if he was sure he wanted to talk about this, since he would only be proving the pathology of his condition. He replied, "No, Phil; they'll think it's you." Damn, Fat, for putting me in this double-bind. Okay; your vision, if true, is overwhelmingly important; if spurious, well, what the hell. I will say about it that it has a curiously practical ring; it does not deal with another world but this world, and extreme is its message—extreme in the sense that if true, we are faced with a grave and urgent situation. So let 'er rip, Fat.
The new savior was born in—or now lives in—Ceylon (Sri Lanka). He is dark-skinned and either a Buddhist or Hindu. He works in the rural countryside with an organization or institute practicing high-technology veterinarian medicine, mainly with large animals such as cattle. (Most of the staff are white.) His name is Tagore something; Fat could not catch the last name: it is very long. Although Tagore is the second incarnation of Christ he is taken to be Lord Krishna by the local population. Tagore is burned and crippled; he cannot walk but must be carried. As near as Fat could make out, Tagore has taken upon himself mankind's sins against the ecosphere. Most of all it is the dumping of toxic wastes into the oceans of the world that shows up on Tagore's body as serious burns. Tagore's kerygma, which is the Third Dispensation (following the Mosaic and Christian), is: the ecosphere is holy and must be preserved, protected, venerated and cherished—as a unity: not the life of individual men or individual animals but the ecosphere as a single indivisible unitary whole; a life-chain then is being destroyed, and not just temporarily but for all time. The demonic trinity which Tagore speaks against—and which is wounding and killing him—consists of nuclear wastes, nuclear weapons and nuclear power (reactors); they constitute the enemy which not only may destroy the ecosphere but already, as toxic wastes, are destroying it now. So again Christ acts out his role of vicarious atonement; he takes upon himself man's sins but these sins are real, not doctrine sins. Tagore teaches that if we destroy the ecosphere much more, Holy Wisdom, the Wisdom of God (represented by Tagore himself), will abandon man to his fate, and that fate is doom.
Tagore teaches that when the ecosphere is burned, God himself is burned, for the Christ has invaded the ecosphere and invisibly assimilated it to himself through transubstantiation—which is the great vision Horselover Fat has in my novel VALIS. Thus Christ and the ecosphere are either one or rapidly becoming one—much as Teilhard de Chardin describes in The Phenomenon of Man. The ecosphere does not evolve into the Cosmic Christ, however; Christ penetrates it, which is exactly what Fat saw and which so amazed him. Thus Christ now speaks out—not just for the salvation of mankind or certain men, "the elect"—but for the ecosphere as a whole, from the snail darter on up. This is a systems concept and was beyond their vocabulary in apostolic times; it has to do with the indivisibility of all life on this planet, as if this planet itself were alive. And Christ is both the soma (body) and psyche (the head) of that collective life. Hence the ultimate statement by Tagore—expressed by his voluntary passion and death—is, He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God. Thus a macro-crucifixion is taking place now, in and as our world, but we do not see it; Tagore, the new incarnation in human form of the Logos, tells us this in order to appeal to us to stop. If we continue we will lose God's Presence and, finally, we will lose our own physical lives. The oceans especially are menaced; Tagore speaks of this most urgently. When each canister of radioactive wastes is dumped into the ocean, a new stigma appears on Tagore's terribly burned, seared legs. Fat was horrified by the sight of these burns, the legs of the savior drawn up in pain. Fat did not see Tagore's face, only his tragically burned body, and yet (Fat tells me) there was an ineffable sweetness about Tagore "like music and perfume and colors," as Fat phrased it to me. Burned as he is, wounded and dying as he is, Tagore nonetheless emits only loving beauty, absolute beauty, not relative beauty. It was a sight that Fat will never forget. I wish I could have shared it, but I had better things to do: watch TV and play electronic computer games. All that good stuff by which we fritter away our lives, while the ecosphere, wounded and in pain and in mortal danger, cries out for our help.
Cordially,
Philip K. Dick
[62:C-34] Let me ask: Did Jesus' crucifixion possess the efficacy or the news of it? And does Tagore's passion and death in themselves possess efficacy or the news of it? I don't know. And what would the effi
cacy be? Surely it lies in awakening us to what we are doing so that we cease (the nuclear waste dumping). Then it is the news, the kerygma. The ecosphere cries out in pain!
[...]
The ecosphere is Christ. This is what we must learn: when we wound the ecosphere we literally wound him; hence the cautionary significance of my vision of Valis, the Corpus Christi in/as nature. We must acquire this vision so that we will grasp why the ecosphere is holy. (Because it is Christ.) (Put another way: "Christ" signifies the total unitary life-system of this planet as an indivisible living entity.)
[62:C-38] This explains my vision of Pinky's death as the death of the savior, and my extrapolation that when each living creature dies, it is Christ dying. I said, "Christ dies for them." Yes, true, but now I view it differently; the crucifixion is re-enacted billions of times over and over again in and as the creatures in the ecosphere die, for Christ is the ecosphere.
[...]
For me personally to keep my sanity in the face of world suffering, I must believe: (1) that it is always and only Christ who suffers, throughout the ecosphere as each creature large and small; (2) that he suffers voluntarily; (3) that his essence of sweetness and perfect spiritual and physical beauty is in no way destroyed or impaired whatever the torment, whatever damage is done to him: his true essence cannot be debased or impaired; (4) that these truths do not make it any more right or in any sense okay because it is only and always Christ who suffers over and over again, but that in fact (5) this makes it worse, and (6) God will not allow this to go on but (7) will withdraw his spirit from the world in punishment of us unless we stop.