The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  The beetle I was tormenting back when I was in the third grade—I saw it as holy, as Christ. Later the turtle was Christ. The rat who screamed was Christ, and appears as such in Tears; this is the revelation in Tears by means of the dream: the rat ensouled and now King Felix: Christ. The crippled lamb who lagged behind. Pinky as pink sheep humiliated and killed. It's all in Androids, and finally the Tagore vision explicates what was already in Androids as doctrine, and in Tears as revelatory cypher. The movie is defeat; the novel victory, ostensible vast loss, secret good shining almost invisibly from beneath this defeat, these fascist power fantasies they've made it into. Evil has served good; evil appears to win but it is good that actually does. [...]

  The Tagore vision is a summation of all that has gone before. Looking at Pinky there toward the end and seeing the passion, seeing Christ humiliated and dying—that was not one vision among many; that was not an aspect of a vision: that was the core of it, the beating heart of it all; when that is coupled with the revelation of the Logos in camouflaged form invading reality (the ecosphere) and transubstantiating it—add these two together, and there it all is. This is not quite the same as Jesus Patibilis; it is a new revelation of something dynamic: a process of conquest. Ah; last night I saw in my mind the Godhead moving into the animal kingdom, and I saw the vast joy that the Godhead experienced in receiving that fallen, lower kingdom (domain) back; not the joy of and by that kingdom, but the joy of and by the Godhead; the Godhead moved into that lower kingdom and inhaled it, drew it back in by it—the Godhead—advancing into that lower, fallen kingdom long separated from the Godhead; and what beauty! The colors, the love; bliss itself, by the Godhead, to receive back that domain with all the life in it. This was a vision of what I had seen in 3-74 of Valis (the Logos) invading reality; there I saw it with my outer eyes, externally, but last night it was an inner vision, and I had forgotten it until this moment; I experienced the joy and love on the part of the Godhead to do this thing, not what was done for the animal kingdom but what the Godhead felt. Colors, as Dante describes the Trinity in Paradiso: the varicolored rings of light; I saw that like rings of Saturn advancing into the animal domain. "The love that moves the sun and the other stars"—it had regained the lost animal kingdom; and this is my vision going back to the beetle I was tormenting in the third grade; it is one vision extended over all my life. And I found it in Act III of Parsifal, the Good Friday Spell. [...] As the EB says, To see in an old dilapidated bum the Christ; that is the Christian Dispensation. But I see in the sick, humiliated, dying animal the Christ, literally saw; and this is the Third Dispensation, the cat crapping and wild, and then all of a sudden tame and wise, like a saint; it was the Christ and this is a new dispensation, Tagore's. Before it was, Where the man is, there is Christ. Now it is, Where the animal is, there is Christ. To see this and understand this: for this I was fashioned from the beginning; for this I was made. My original satori regarding the beetle was the true one; everything else only amplifies. [...]

  A strange and mysterious strategy: to put the new kerygma in a novel published in the late sixties but then disclosed to me only now, toward the end of 1981, but just at the time that we get the signed contract with the Blade Runner people to rerelease the novel in conjunction with the film—as if the VALIS trilogy has diverted everyone's attention, my own included, like when the thought came to me that the true message was in "Frozen Journey" and not in VALIS! The true message is not in VALIS, but it is, I now think, in Androids and it will have the greatest circulation—probably—of all. Viewed in terms of God's strategy, Blade Runner has been used as a means to an end, the end being the kerygma in Androids. Thus to have suppressed Androids and either written or authorized the novelization based on the screenplay would have been to hand over victory to evil, but this did not happen. The fully executed contract between Blade Runner and me regarding the rerelease of Androids was waiting for me in my post office box on Friday, the day I was up in Venice and learned the truth.

  To share—experience—the joy by the Godhead as it invades—expands into—the animal kingdom, lost to it all these many millennia! The repair to the damaged Godhead! Yes, it is a self-repair, a reinhaling, a recovery of part of its lost self. Christ reknitting the decomposing cosmos and restoring it to God. Christ moves lower and lower, deeper and deeper into the decomposing cosmos, down layer by layer, starting with man. Thus the vision of Christ at and in the trash layer (stratum) is a vision of ultimate and final repair.

  Why am I so joyful? I am celebrating a victory and can now stop work—finally—and relax. Why? Because I did my job and I know it. What was the job? To get the third dispensation in print, and I did so in Androids—I need do nothing else in my life. The Tagore vision: the Godhead expanding into the ecosphere (animal kingdom).

  Okay: there are other aspects. I didn't sell out to Hollywood: (1) do the novelization or (2) permit the novelization; (3) suppress the original book. And in view of what the film is about, it would have destroyed me for two reasons, not one: (A) the Tagore vision in Androids; (B) the Heinlein power fantasies in Blade Runner. These are antithetical: and they express the opposing kingdom's Christ (Androids) and Satan (Blade Runner). Look what it would have done to me spiritually and psychologically and politically. My soul is safe, and it was in jeopardy. This is why I see victory despite the vast defeat.*

  Folder 55

  December 1981

  [55:L-18] I have it now:

  Buckman Jason Alys

  Claudius Hamlet Gertrude

  Pentheus Zagreus

  Pilate Jesus

  Tears Joy

  Old Young

  Usurper Rightful king

  Tyrant Liberator

  What is being studied? A usurper is on the throne. The rightful king (who is younger) appears as a madman, criminal or fool; he is mysterious; his nature and origins are uncertain. He is arrested and tried. (I should say falsely arrested.) Interrogated by the old king (usurper). He is charged with a crime he did not commit. The resolution varies; sometimes he is acquitted and assumes the throne; sometimes he is killed. The white-haired old king on horseback may be the murdered father of the young man who is the rightful heir to the throne; he returns to seek justice: punishment of the usurper; the son placed on the throne. This story is told and retold. Why? What are we supposed to learn? That the ostensible ruling power of this world is illegitimate? The "King" is not in fact the true king? And the "fool" is not mad or a fool or a criminal but is the rightful king? My analysis: everything we see is a 180-degree mirror opposite of the truth. The ostensible "king" is not only not the true king, he also has no actual power: despite appearances his power is illusory.* All true power belongs to the "fool" who is the true king (vide The Bacchae). This is all some sort of play—which Hamlet very clearly alludes to. We are to guess the riddle: Who is the true king? (And hence, who really rules, i.e., who has power?) This strikes me as some sort of religious pageant or initiatory rite or ritual into a hidden truth deliberately concealed from the many. Only what are called "the elect" are let in on the true state of affairs. Who, then, qualifies as one of "the elect"? Perhaps one who before (i.e., without) knowing the truth, reveals his own true nature; that is, faced with a moral choice, even though he is deliberately misled as to the actual situation—that is, who holds power, who does not—he chooses correctly nonetheless. Once he has so chosen, the masks are dropped and the true state of affairs is revealed to him.

  [...]

  Oh Dio—I just put together several extraordinary theological ideas. On November 1 when I had that psychotic anxiety and had to have Tess and Christopher come over—I realized then that hell consisted of a state of absolute self-awareness of what you had done—forever; that is, you accused yourself and found yourself guilty—and then had to live with and as that guilty self forever. Last night I dreamed about Harlan Ellison and realized that about him: he'd have to exist throughout all eternity with and as Harlan Ellison.

  But now, suddenly, the sign
ificance of justification occurs to me; in the light of the above it assumes the absolute quality that Paul and the Reformers assigned to it. Justification is, as it were, the sole, the real, solution to—the saving you from—hell, precisely as Paul and the Reformers taught. Since hell as a state is absolute, and justification is absolute.

  Well, this idea is not new or original but, rather, my first understanding of sin, hell, salvation, grace and justification! As orthodoxy regards all these. Justification saves the person who otherwise is doomed; he does not save himself (e.g., by good works): the power to save lies in God. Thus, if indeed it is the case that in 2-3-74 I was justified, then though my own conscience accuse me, I am not merely called justified but am, through God (God's grace) saved in fact—I mean, justified in fact; I am changed through Christ. Jesus Christ, then, is paradigmatic of the saved/justified person, who was often called by the Reformers "a Christ" and I think correctly: it is almost a technical term, not just a compliment. So much more than pronoia and astral determinism was involved in 2-3-74; they were, but far beyond that lay justification stemming from the same source: charis: God's saving grace.

  If we are indeed here in this world, as I suspect, to be fashioned and shaped, to become (our einai established forever), then justification is the finishing of this, the sudden perfecting, and is the logical outcome of what we are here for. God has judged, closed the books; the person has been made by God acceptable, in the twinkling of an eye. Now my statement that "PKD now (12-81) is very much what Thomas was in 3-74" suddenly tells me that it is all okay: Thomas was my justified, perfected self, and thus I evolve (thank God!) toward becoming him more and more: he was the future.

  [55:L-35] I just remembered (5:45 P.M.) a right-hemisphere graphic image in hypnagogic sleep last night: I had been thinking about the two coaxial worlds in which one—hidden—is Christ's kingdom. All of a sudden I saw a network of red threads forming a vascular system, as in our bodies; at the same time this was also a growing arborizing vine constantly becoming more and more intricate; and it was like the mycelia of a mushroom. This intersticing arboring network (I realized when I saw it) grows invisibly within our world, and this is what I saw as the plasmate, Christ's blood as living information—literally saw. But here now I beheld it as a network, a structure so-to-speak "invading" or internally penetrating our reality invisibly, and ever growing and becoming more complex. This is both Christ and his kingdom, and in 3-74 I had done a set-ground discrimination of it—this is what Jesus meant when he referred to himself as the "true vine" and it is the vision I had that day at the dentist's. And this fits with Valis here (i.e., Christ) camouflaged in our reality.

  Then all portions of the plasmate form one organism or entity, and the living information does not pertain to it but is it, is Christ.

  [55:3-2] We are told in the synoptics that indeed the secret is kept from the many and revealed to the few; this is explicit. As the operation of heaven is for the nepioi and ptochoi and not for the proud (i.e., all others) it follows that only the former will ever know that the answer to the Tears riddle is the case. Here is why: if all people understood that by following Jesus' teachings—which seem to be self-sacrifice absolutely—one acquires the support of the absolute power of heaven, then self-interest not morality would impel men, all men, to follow the way, and summarily the moral aspect would be engulfed by the pragmatic and practical, and an ethical system would succumb to the degradation of personal ambition. Thus the "secrecy theme" is simply unavoidable.48 There just plain is no other way that it can be done. Hence the stegenography, the veiling, is essential to the situation to a degree that by the very essence of logic admits of no mitigation or compromise. The way now will seem folly but must inexorably and inevitably seem so. Thus the apparent failure of Jesus and of Christianity and the apparent non-occurrence of his return in glory—this fiction has to obtain. The prophecy and promise of the return in glory (1) had to be made; and (2) appear not to be fulfilled. Then the fact that it is always and eternally in fact fulfilled is the ultimate secret of the way, second only to the answer to the riddle posed in Tears.

  [...]

  To reprise, "Christ's return in glory" is a disclosure rather than a historical event, and the ubiquitous false notion that Jesus failed, his ethics do not work and he did not return not only must be the case but in fact serves as a top-level agency, agent and instrument of the very system that is doubted. The doubt is necessary to it, serves it, is subsumed by it, even generated by it. The system is in absolute control, and utilizes this disbelief—and this disbelief can only be abolished as a result of moral action and never before that essential moral action; it is not just allowed: it is (I think) imposed as a necessary condition that the moral act be possible. Thus it is hopeless for me to expect to convince anyone of the truth of my revelation in VALIS because this is not how it works. This is not how it should work. This is not how it can work. My error is to reason: (1) Knowledge of the truth. (2) Then as a result, right conduct. But (2) would have ceased to be based on free choice, true ethical decision, and would be merely smart. The act would be done for tangible reward, and this has nothing to do with morality and ethics. Right action must bear the stamp of folly, self-sacrifice and, finally, madness itself. For the first time in my life I understand the necessity of what I have long identified as a vast, deep and powerful cognitive and perceptive occlusion.

  [55:X-4] Last night at Juan's the God told me: "You are now permitted to be happy (Felix) at last." The God brings joy into the world and overthrows the reign of the old, former King of tears; it is the procession of the ages from iron—Pentheus and the BIP—to gold: Zagreus-Jesus in the Garden and the animals. The newborn King who "will wipe away every tear." As I realized, Christianity is secretly a religion of ecstasy, and that was my turning point.

  There is a thematic link between Tears (the NT and Dionysus story), Deus Irae (Christianity), Scanner (two personalities), VALIS (two personalities, Christianity), DI (the Savior, Judaism) and BTA (Christianity and two personalities, Bill and Tim, if not three: Christ also, and the Dionysus story). Six novels linked together. The most interesting link is the two personalities link in Scanner, VALIS and BTA. People will see this, but few will see that it also begins with and in Tears. If you study these six novels as a unity—and this is my third period—you discern a fascinating story not really clarified until BTA when at the end Christ emerges explicitly. (One could even argue that Confessions is part of this in that Jack Isidore and Bill resemble each other—whereupon it is at once clear that a fortiori Androids enters via J. R. Isidore—which takes us at once to the sacredness of the animals and Mercer.) This last is important. The nature of the truly human stands, then, in this complex eight volume meta-novel as a midpoint between the android (e.g., Rachel Rosen) and the divine (Mercer, Bill at the end of BTA). What strikes me most forcefully is the very great importance that Androids had in this eight volume meta-novel: what if we had not reissued it? It is an absolutely essential component, perhaps the most important of all, but in itself alone not in any way expressing the full meaning; only when linked up with BTA does the meaning become clear (and vice versa in terms of BTA); that is, BTA only assumes its full stature in significance when viewed in conjunction with Androids: the theme of the madman and the holy fool in the love for and care of animals all at once stands out sharply. (When we first encounter Bill, he is the 180-degree mirror opposite of the Rachel Rosen and the spider scene in Androids and linked to it necessarily through J. R. Isidore.) Amazing. [...]

  Perhaps most important of all, if one traces the holy fool from Confessions to Androids to BTA we see him at last, at the very end, reveal his true nature and identity as that of Christ: it is not at all there in Confessions; it is somewhat there in Androids—in which he meets the Savior, Mercer; but in BTA the long-awaited revelation at last comes. Who and where is the anticipated Savior spoken of in VALIS? In and as the holy fool first brought to our attention in Confessions, just as the fool, with no
religious overtones. In Androids the holy enters, in and as Mercer (linked to the animals); and in BTA the supreme mystery is revealed: we had him—the Savior—with us from the start, as Jack Isidore. The link—absolutely necessary—between Confessions and BTA is Androids and again I say, what if we had suppressed it? Had we done so, the intact story would never have been told: from fool (nut) to holy fool (loving and innocent) to Christ himself. This is a vast theme and very complex, but also very clear: it is quite coherent.* [...]

  But there is a point I am missing that is substantial and crucial: the axis of fool–holy fool–Christ completes itself not by evolution but by virtue of the fact that the fool, proven holy, is seized by Christ entering from outside—as perfectly expressed in the John Donne sonnet that Angel thinks of—significantly!—when she first sees Bill ("... unless you ravish me"). Christ enters the holy fool and takes full possession of him, consuming him utterly, and this is the explanation and the event both that is the 3-part axis. Bill is not Christ; Bill is seized on by Christ and taken over by Christ; for a while there are two selves, Bill's and the extrinsic "intruder." And, at last, only Christ. This clearly relates to Dionysus, but that seems of lesser importance to me now. To repeat, the holy fool neither is Christ or becomes Christ; he is invaded by Christ as the Holy Spirit, and this is the miracle, and this it is that is the end state of what we saw in Confessions with no hint that it would end this way! Now, the trick starting this would be if one read Confessions, Androids, BTA and then VALIS, for having absorbed the idea of this axis and seizure, what would one now make of what VALIS narrates? Why, this very seizure that is put forth rather sparingly at the end of BTA! The total analysis and presentation of the mechanics of it, as it were. The seizure step-by-step with all its ramifications, appears in VALIS—and so, to put it another way, we now understand what VALIS is all about, then! And after all it really was the purpose of BTA to explain VALIS. But there is a thematic link between VALIS and BTA I've failed to note: Bill is insane, and Horselover Fat is insane; so Fat is another avatar explicitly of the fool, holy fool, madman, Christ. But if VALIS is viewed after one has studied Confessions, Androids, and BTA the results are amazing as to what VALIS really depicts—and it, more than the other novels, is clearly autobiographical, and perhaps not a novel, not fiction, at all.