The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  [62:C-161] Where Gnosticism is indispensable is twofold: (1) exact analysis of fallen man's condition; and (2) it is 180 degrees reversed by what is called "Gnosis," a cognitive event. But their overall system is unsound. Nonetheless Gnosticism contains essential pieces of the puzzle. They have an exact understanding of the malady and also the correct idea that the remedy somehow involves cognition and knowledge and this knowledge comes as a gift from a savior or messenger—i.e., Christ. Thus they fully appreciate what "salvation" refers to, in contrast to which orthodox Christianity is virtually a cargo cult making futile motions that ape without efficacy the real thing.

  [62:C-168] I have supra done something never before done: rather than drawing on Gnosticism I have figured out the real teaching of the Gnostics. At some primordial time there was indeed a crisis in the heights, but this isn't what interests the Gnostics; Gnosticism is practical: the Gnostics have studied the effect of this crisis and figured out that the intactness of each person in the world is either damaged or abolished (destroyed); each of us has suffered a primordial inner schism with the result that any given human self is only part of a once-intact greater self. Each of us is alienated from the world (man contra world) because each of us is alienated from himself, not just warring or in conflict: no: the parts of the self have become separated from each other and because of that, experience of world is partial, occluded, impaired, deformed. A partial self experiences a partial world, with the result that world is alien, irreal, hostile, strange, arousing perplexity and dread. Man does not understand world because he does not understand himself; thus Gnosticism derives its epistemology (and cosmogony and cosmology) from an ontology of psychology. If the missing piece of self is rejoined—if the severed parts come back together, experience of world—Dasein, being-in-the-world—will take care of itself: the rupture between self and world will heal on its own because now world will be experienced radically differently, 180 degrees differently. Gnosticism has hidden its ontological psychology within a weird and grotesque mythology that successfully obscures both real purpose and real means to that purpose: to bring the two parts of the self back together (the in-gathering of the light by the messenger who is "the savior saved." Clear evidence that this divine champion is the person himself rescuing himself).

  [62:C-170] The absolutely basic key to Gnosticism is the encounter with the familiar in the midst of the alien landscape: the partial self recognizes something that it has seen before and yet cannot have seen before because by definition this is a fremd (unfamiliar) landscape, not the self: "own." With this recognition comes unavoidable returned (restored) memory, which is memory of what it—the self—once was. What it is remembering is its true nature. (The relation to Orphism is obvious.) But it is missing half of itself; it now knows itself to be a partial fragment of a once intact self that is now somehow scattered. Thus although anamnesis is not pri mary—it is predicated on recognizing something familiar in the uncanny world—it is the crucial event, because it is in and through anamnesis that the parts of the self, separated for aeons, come back together. This means that all the pieces comprising the total, restored, intact self are somehow "in" the self in some way, as if split or dormant or mutually estranged. This would explain the drop in GABA fluid, the blocked neural circuitry disinhibited and at last firing. This literally occurs, as an organic, physiological brain-function.

  Involved (simultaneously) in this process is an additional absolutely crucial ingredient—event, realization—that I call the "meta-abstraction" and which Plato calls noesis. The partial (incomplete) self on its own cannot perform this cognitive operation because it requires two vantage-points by the participant (what I call Ditheon), analogous to spatial parallaxes. That which is recognized as familiar must be, by definition, familiar to the estranged, severed part of the total self since by definition it has never been seen before by the conscious self—which is only a partial self. That is, for the sense of recognition to occur, the conscious self cannot avoid being aware of its own banished part for it is precisely that banished part that knows what is seen, recognizes it. There is here a hint of the primordial, suggesting that the original schism did occur in the prenatal past, as Plato taught. But the situation is more complex, because at the level at which the total self operates, the concept "past" must be redefined. Here Platonist epistemology enters with its forms doctrine. Unless the universalia ante rem34 are envisioned, what is happening cannot be fathomed. The two parts of the self are not in the same spatiotemporal world. Their relationship to each other comes through—occurs because of—a trans-temporal constant (form) that because it is trans-temporal and -spatial exists "simultaneously" in both realms: the realms sharing at least one constant, the one seen and recognized as familiar. It is as if both realms, at two times and two places, are operating off of a common matrix and this indeed is how Plato depicts the forms: they are not in time and space, and somehow instantiate themselves at this time and this place yet without losing their unity and intactness.

  Much of this is palpably Platonist and Neoplatonist, but what is truly Gnostic is the idea that the self is fragmented—broken—so that part of it is at one time-and-place and the other part at another time-and-place; thus Gnosticism adds a radical ontological psychological analysis lacking in Platonism and Neoplatonism, and, logically following from this premise, a soteriology based on a successful rejoining of the fragmented parts of the self. (Plato and Plotinus know nothing of this.) From the Gnostic viewpoint, each fragment of the broken-apart self is not experiencing world at all, in the strict sense, and only will do so when rejoined; meanwhile the situation of the fragments is one of alienation—primarily from self, and, following from this self-alienation, alienation from world—or worlds, since both halves of the total self are independently tracking (experiencing) different partial realities connected only by the Platonic forms, which by their nature are in all worlds at all times and places, or anyhow capable of being so. The in-gathering of the self, then, is due accidentally to the perceived form (one form seen twice; that is, in two different spatiotemporal worlds) but deliberately to the "salvador salvandus," which is the total intact self operating on its own severed parts to rejoin them: external in a real sense, internal in a real sense, since each severed part is external to the other part, and yet each internally drives toward reintegration. Thus each part both internally seeks wholeness and is simultaneously aided externally in this quest by the other part; only when the parts have come together successfully does the total motivation seem internal.

  But now rejoined, the two parts become a unitary totality and experience a radically different world than either part previously experienced. Space, time, causation, and multiplicity are gone; what exists now is world as unfallen pleroma, because upon the self being reunified, world ceases to be the alien, irreal pseudo world the parts knew—were "thrown" into. Restoration to and of self and pleroma then occurs here and now (as Plotinus speaks of). This unified world defies normal ordering categories and experiences the Ditheon entity that experiences it. It is familiar, intelligible and permanent and, most of all, permeated by the divine (whose realm it is). It is a kind of after-life world. (The whole is greater than the sum of its parts and radically different than them.) The gulf between "Earth" and "Heaven" is abolished (which explains why the Orphics and Gnostics assumed a literal spatial fall!). There is an absolute impression of vertical ascent. But what is most striking is that the "transmundane" deity now reveals its presence in reality precisely as it failed to do so before—hence the Gnostic conviction that it is transmundane. This is so remarkable as to defy description.

  [62:C-181] Gnosticism is virtually a sign-value reversal religion; that is, it assumes the ostensible reality to be a fraud concealing the true story which is 180 degrees opposite—hence the need for the revelation of the Gnosis. Everything must be read backward. We are secretly in a giant prison, secretly in thrall. There is a deliberate occlusion practiced on us by hostile warders. The truth is not
just hidden; it is deliberately hidden to keep us in ignorance. Were we to know the truth, all would be turned around, all that we see. There is, then, in Gnosticism a built-in revolutionary, subversive basis fighting the ruling powers of this world.

  [...]

  To reveal is to reverse; to reverse is to reveal; they are one and the same.*

  [62:C-183] The quintessential Gnostic vision is not that our world is a prison or that the creator is insane and hence our world is; the quintessential vision is optimistic: the luminous messenger has come here and is here, invisibly to rescue/save us. Thus we pass over from paranoia and negativism to soteriology, the real Gnosis! VALIS, then, is not about Gnosticism; it is (an instance of) the Gnosis itself.➊ I find myself totally convinced by it. VALIS is not about our condition; it is about the rescue from our condition and hence is a valid Gnostic revelation, indubitably. This is not a book by someone who has read about Gnosticism or knows about it; this book is a Gnostic experience recorded: Gnostic soteriology itself. Suddenly the book throws aside its wraps; it is not about mental illness at all: it is an account of the Gnostic soteriological reality here (normally invisible) in our world. Our irrational world has been penetrated from outside.

  One could make up a novel in which the fallen categories of Gnosticism are shown because (as Heidegger says) these are in fact the conditions and happenstance that we do find ourselves caught in. But the soteriological elements are something else because by definition (Gnostic definition) they are transmundane: supernatural in the purest, most absolute sense—and hence play no role in the quasi-gnostic modern existential systems. Thus I could have in VALIS pondered the irrationality of world, its prison-like nature, etc. But there would have been no mention of Valis, nor could there have been. Suppose, however, upon reading about Gnosticism I had elected to make up a soteriological element. But then we would have had a genuine fallen component and a fictional soteriological element, the two not in any way joining to form a coherent whole. One would truly pertain to world and world-experience (Dasein); the other would be a patent fabrication merely imaginative and, hence, a grotesque anachronism playing no role in the lives and experience, worldview and thinking of contemporary man. The result would be absurd: the most critically Valis aspects of human existence would be juxtaposed with bizarre fantasy—and, worst of all, the latter would be introduced to solve the former—with the bitter result that the former (man's thrown and fallen Dasein) would seem just that much more hopeless.

  However, the problem (Verfallenheit) and soteriological solution are in VALIS a seamless whole. One must either accept both or reject both; they are indivisible. Now, an ignorant reader rejects both as "madness" but this is a faulty solution; he does not know enough practically and theoretically to understand that the former (Verfallenheit) cannot be dismissed (the problems stated by Fat and which he seeks to solve and understand). But the wiser reader in facing the reality of Fat's questions and problems—because that reader knows of Heidegger and existentialism in general—now must confront the soteriological solution presented in VALIS and consider what it may mean. Here he draws a blank, for as Galbraith pointed out, we have absolutely no vision or concept of—belief in—a transmundane deity. We understand the problem but see no solution; this is either nihilism or leads to it.

  What, however, if the soteriological theme in VALIS is taken to be as real as the stated problems? This (the reader knows) is impossible. The appeal to his assent can't be responded to, because the reader knows the problems to be unanswerable; this intractability of the Verfallen situation is his (as an existentialist) fundamental article of faith. He not only knows that the situation is real, he also knows that by its very nature it cannot be rectified; true honesty and courage and integrity require that he take this implacable stand of confronting the is qua is. To start supposing transmundane intervention undoes the very basis of moral values built into his realization: that it is a hopeless situation and that he faces this absolutely. Thus to him VALIS is more dangerous than it is to a more ignorant person who is able to deny or ignore the problems raised as insane, morbid or self-indulgent. VALIS is dangerous because upon stating the problem in a modern way, it thereupon draws on a solution so absurd and obsolete that it—the solution—seems to insult the integrity of the very person able to perceive the reality of the problem! VALIS, then, aims at the most modern and sophisticated reader and then presents him with a "solution" as foolish as the problems stated are real.

  What he does not see is that VALIS is written backward, from solu tion (soteriology) to problem (Verfallenheit). The author is stipulating the problem only to account for the existence of the solution (he has reasoned back from the soteriological experience to the problem). He knows the solution firsthand and infers the problem using it as his premise. VALIS, then, only seems to be an existential work; in reality it is a Gnostic gospel.*

  ➊ It is what it describes—hence self-authenticating.

  [62:C-192] Cease to run from your death, turn and face it and make it yours (Eigen), your own, not the it—fremd—of others. When you do this, time (the past and the future) collapses into the present; there is only the now (Dasein); this death is now (spiritually and ontologically) for in making it yours you seize it and master it and assimilate it to you (not you to it); this world is radically transformed and becomes as-if-you. This is the "seizing Fate by the throat" that Beethoven spoke of; it is the epitome of the heroic—not the tragic!—it is in fact the heroic replacing the tragic; destiny is your victim, not your master: you are the craftsman, it the artifact.

  This is the topic of Wagner's "Ring," the gods against Fate. In it the gods lose. Thus tragedy wins. It need not be so, not for the creative artist.

  The great confrontation worthy of man is between tragedy (the classic and Greek victory by Fate over man) and the heroic (modern and Faustian: the victory of man over Fate)—and this is achieved by collapsing time and space and meeting death now, on your own terms: seizing it, not it you, you die, but it is your death, not death imposed on you in violation of your nature; it is a logical outcome of what you are, not what world and Fate are. He who can do this has won where in the "Ring" the gods lost.

  [62:C-194] I survived 2-3-74 and wrote about it in and as VALIS and hence made my death my own—by living long enough to write about it, that is, I artistically and creatively depicted my own death, and this is the victory of the heroic over the tragic. This is what Beethoven did. I have done it and nothing can change this; but if I hadn't written VALIS (even if I had lived on past 2-3-74 for decades) this would not be the case. It was not the surviving 2-3-74 but the writing about it that gave the victory to the heroic over the tragic, as with Bob Fosse in All That Jazz.

  It is Oedipus or Beethoven: the antique heimarmene wins (tragedy) or the creative human warrior wins (the heroic); this is the past (Greek) vs. the modern world (the Faustian). I chose the latter in 2-3-74 and VALIS is the proving of my choice and my victory; I willed it and I accomplished it. To do it I had to seize world, collapse time, devour my own death—as if Zagreus ate the Titans!

  [62:C-197] Who would guess that the heroic would enter the world as the meek sacrificial lamb? This is not an orthodox Christian secret; it is Manichaean. But this—like the kingdom itself—is indeed how the heroic drove/drives out the tragic: it is a strategy that fools all...

  [62:C-201] Viewed this way, Christianity, and especially Gnosticism, represents the great revolution in human history that divides the ancient world of fatalism (which included the Greeks) from the modern world of the heroic—even when the heroic is disguised as sacrifice, for this is how it (the heroic) enters the world: as the lamb—i.e., sacrifice.

  [62:C-203] The weapons of power—coercive physical power—lose because they inevitably encounter some adversary more powerful. The only real victory can occur by being conquered (as bait/sacrifice: swallowed by evil) and then coming-into-being, at the center of evil, and this is precisely what true Christianity—in secret—has done;
thus it is subversive and invisible and at the center of power in its disguised form (mimesis). Evil poses as good; good is invisible within it, unknown to it (i.e., to evil, the BIP). All this is taught in the Tao Te Ching, oddly: this is how the Tao works ("a perturbation in the reality field").*

  ***

  [62:C-219]

  Folder 63

  Fall 1981

  [63:D-47] God gives birth to the universe through his injury, suffering and death; hence Jesus Patibilis. Creating is a giving birth by him and causes him suffering; the Tagore vision shows that the suffering is now so great that he, the creator, may die—and hence withdraw from creation and creating, and it is our fault as a species. He has placed himself at our disposal, but, due to our crimes, his suffering becomes too great. He is the great friendly fish in Galina's dream, offering his body to us to eat: this is creation itself: the very world (reality) we live in.35 It (reality) is an offering, a sacrifice, but we respond wrongly and wrong him. This is not just the Savior; this is God himself, converting himself into world—at terrible cost to himself. (This is, I guess, eco-theology.)