The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  [55:Z-2] I had the strangest insight after seeing The Elephant Man that for some reason I failed to write down. Viz: we are not linked to world directly as:

  but rather:

  That is, there is world, objective and substantial and real, but between us and it there is God, so that we receive world through God. This makes it possible for God to control and arrange how we experience world, what in world strikes us forcefully—that is, God acts as a medium of selection in our apprehension of world so that for each individual person world is not only experienced uniquely (differing from person to person) but uniquely in purposeful ways: certain elements stressed, others suppressed—this especially has to do with information patterns that impinge compellingly (or, conversely, not at all). Now, this resembles Malebranche's epistemology somewhat, and yet is crucially different. Viz: God and world are clearly distinct.

  What emerges here (in this theory) is a totally new explanation of 2-3-74. Either there was massive selecting (for a time) or I became aware of massive selecting, that is, aware of the medium as interface between me and world (i.e., such massive selection always goes on, but we know it not, supposing all we experience to be properties of world and applying to the encounter with world by all persons uniformly). Now, a powerful but by no means invincible argument can be offered that due to my meta-abstraction in 2-74 (that is, due to a sudden titanic insight) I comprehended something about world that makes it possible for me on my own to fathom the presence of this selecting interface. The meta-abstraction would (perhaps) then have been that there was a pluralized signal system at the point of origin (world) but that only one set normally reaches me, which says a lot about world, but also presumes a selecting interface. Thus "world" is radically redefined but, more, the interface is realized and its selecting (suppressing, enhancing) activity, and this is God (Valis). So what comes of this meta-abstraction pertains to epistemology ("ti to on?" in terms of world) but yields up by implication a much more radical notion—that in fact world qua world is less an issue than the interface itself that lies between us and world and passing the power selectively to determine what of world impinges on us and what, contrarily, is suppressed—whereupon (I think) I found myself dealing with the interface itself, and this is theophany. As if, upon my becoming aware of it, it could then "speak" as it were explicitly, by means of open enhancing-suppression patterning, which clearly did not emanate from and in world but existed between world and my percept system.

  It is possible that world qua world consists of eternal constants, and the interface modulates our reception in extraordinary ways and to extraordinary degrees, e.g., your "being" in A.D. 70 in Syria or USA 1974 depends only on the interface, on its selecting. World and interface, then, are quite distinct. Malebranche's epistemological premise, then, is quite the case: "We see all things in God."

  ***

  A strange insight last night (hypnagogic). The person who—there is some relation between intelligence and the empathic facility. But when I was tormenting the beetle and understood, that understanding (which I have called satori) was due to God's grace. For that knowledge cannot in fact be known. There is no active (rational) way that I can know how that beetle feels or even that it feels; I know by the grace of God; it is a gift conferred on me, as were the later satoris. This is the activity of salvation. The prison of the isolation of the atomized individual is burst through the grace of God by this knowledge. And he who has this not is not evil but deprived. And he on his own cannot change his situation, for there is no rational way—only a supernatural way—that this knowledge can be obtained. I must not blame someone who possesses not this knowledge, for there is no way he can obtain or acquire it on his own; he is totally dependent on the grace of God. Here is where the original satori is as the 2-74 meta-abstraction was. But this shows that although the 2-74 meta-abstraction had to do with cognition it was given to me from outside, which brings me to the issue of Socrates vs. Jesus that Tillich speaks of. Reminding the person (Socrates' route) and what is already in him; or Jesus' way (midwife, as Tillich puts it).

  It is not probable that the meta-abstraction was truly an intrinsic (internal) cognitive act on my part—either viewed in isolation or in relation to the sequence of earlier satoris. All one knows is that one now knows what one did not know, but not due to ratiocination, due rather to some element outside. And this is the key clue: outside. But I figured out last night that we do not know world directly but through God as lens link interface. So the stimulus in outside reality affords God the interface the opportunity (to use Malebranche's term) (no: his term is occasion) to transfer knowledge pretextually, as it were. This is in conformity with my whole conception of clutch, selection, enhancement and suppression and not a special situation, only—as Joyce calls it—an epiphany of regular conditions. It is as if the pretext is clearly only pretext. Effect—that which is known—far exceeding its ostensible cause. As to the transfer of information regarding Christopher's birth defect, the situation is clearly and explicitly such that it is palpably impossible that insentient plural objects can give rise to the information, in which case something is there that I have always spoken of as camouflaged in and as ordinary plural insentient objects.

  These various situations that I denote here are differing versions of one enduring underlying stable situation that by its very ubiquity escapes our notice. Thus beetle, meta-abstraction, and Valis informing me of Chrissy's birth defect are in fact one and the same experience along an axis of revelation as follows: (1) With the beetle there is no reason to suspect that the knowledge does not arise naturally (unaided) from the ostensible situation; cause (the situation) and effect (the knowledge) seem commensurate. (2) In the meta-abstraction the effect exceeds the cause/the situation outside me, but it is not at all clear where the knowledge is internally retrieved in me (Plato's anamnesis) or transferred from outside. (3) But in the situation regarding Chrissy's birth defect there is now no doubt that the information (knowledge) cannot arise from or be accounted for by the situation (i.e., the Beatles song, etc.). In this case the satori I experienced regarding the ending of The Elephant Man is a satori concerning satoris: not only is it perfectly clear that the knowledge is transferred from outside (it is external in origin, and a free gift) but that the source is not in world but as-it-were between me and world so that I am dealing with world indirectly but dealing with the interface (by definition) directly. This precisely agrees with Nicolas Malebranche. What is now disclosed was in fact the state all the time, but behaving so as to conceal itself and in fact its existence.

  At this point it is clear that there is now the resolution to my total lifelong epistemology which strove from the start to resolve the issue of (dokos). It reaches the conclusion that while world exists it is per se unknowable to us, but on the other hand we immediately know God—which is Malebranche's contention. Now, a verification of this is the infinitude of space that I experienced in 3-74: I was encountering not the physical world in space (extension, res extensae) but the infinitude of God. But here the problem and issue of epistemology collapses into the matter of grace.

  Because the power to bestow and withhold knowledge of what is truly there (the answer to "ti to on?") is to say God, and no activity on our part will in itself ever unravel the mystery. (The nature of the situation dictates this, and Kant seems to be the first thinker systematically aware of this.) If on our own we try to plumb—or even discern—the interface we enter an infinite regress—as I've discovered for almost 8 years: since the interface is not so much:

  but:

  Which is to say that the interface is somehow in us and in world; so the interface simply recycles our own mind back to us over and over again; the prison gate of isolation—of the atomized self—closes once more (this is dealt with in "Frozen Journey"). Thus we know others only through the grace of God (as in the beetle satori), and this pertains of salvation: to know others—just as hell pertains to isolation. Then knowledge of God as other is knowledge of ul
timate other and is the triumph and consummation of the axis of salvation that began, for me, with the beetle satori. If (agape) equals empathy then there is only one road to salvation; in its partial form it deals with and pertains to finite creatures (but is real): in its complete form (absolute, realized form) it pertains to God; this is an axis. What and who one has loved in world ("love" here being ) has always pertained to God; it was always God who was loved, so that in the end all that was lost—all that was known and hence loved—is restored in and as God.

  I never would have come to these realizations except for Malebranche. Then upon seeing the film The Elephant Man figuring out the interface. Then, last night, realizing that all my satoris, back to the first, the beetle one, are due to grace and involve knowledge—correct knowledge—that by its nature can only be revealed; whereupon I now see one vast axis of disclosure from the first (the beetle), culminating in 2-74 and then 3-74, and then tapering off in subsequent revelations. 2-3-74—and specifically Valis itself, in me and in external reality, centering around the transfer of information about Chrissy's birth defect—then is the quintessential moment in a pattern of revelation predicated on grace and involving salvation stretching out across my entire life. What, then, I have viewed as a preoccupation with epistemology turns out to be a search for—and a finding of—God.

  [55:Z-8] "A long extinct true cosmos and it's still there." AI voice: hypnogogic.

  "Extinct" must mean: in terms of our ability to perceive it.

  [55:D-70] Dio. Eureka. I found the—

  Christic Institute.49 All the way back to Tears: the "Acts" material, the dream, the King-Felix cypher. Karen Silkwood.

  The Parousia is here and the Holy Mother Church knows it. My 2-3-74 to 2-75 experience (back to '70 if you include Tears) has to do with the Parousia. Eleven years and at last I hold it in my hands and it does have to do with Pere Teilhard. My Tagore vision is authentic; Christ is here. Point Omega.

  [...]

  What—I think—is the most exciting is that due to 2-3-74, my Tagore vision, what Victor Ferkis has said and the Christic Institute, I can now discern—albeit dimly—the outline of a new theology, rooted in the epoch we are moving into. It is a Christian-Buddhist neo-pantheism very close to Pere Teilhard's Christocentric Point Omega, but having specifically to do with the unitary ecosphere—and for me, closely related to Malebranche's Cartesian pantheism, which of course goes back to Augustine and Pauline mysticism—and may also include the new physics and field theory, a merging of science and theology in defense of a palpably living universe. (There may also be an information and a Platonic component.)

  I feel confident now that my 2-3-74 experience is not reactionary but is carrying me into the future—a vast quantum leap from political action to one colossal metaview of reality that embraces the political and the spiritual, the scientific and the religious: what for me personally may be the quintessential summation of my entire life of inquiry and worldview; for me and for mankind a new age is opening in which the holy, expected from the top, so to speak, returns at the bottom, at the trash stratum of the alley, humble and noble, beautiful and suffering and alive and conscious, personified in and by my Tagore vision.

  If indeed it is the triumph of Christianity to dignify the lowly, here now is a whole new leap along that axis: the lowly snail darter becomes identified with suffering ubiquitous Christ and by being assimilated to him is glorified as if nature itself—and the electronic environment of info and signals and message traffic—is able to perish and be resurrected as and with the cosmic Christ (Jesus Patibilis) of Pere Teilhard. Thus Christ extends even beyond the reality of the organic to bits of newspaper and song lyrics and random pages of popular print: one vast entity that evolves and thinks and has both personality and consciousness. It perfects itself and includes us all, subsuming and incorporating progressively more and more of its environment into arrangements of information—which is to say negative entropy: this is, in fact, a runaway positive feedback loop of greater and greater complexity and organization.

  Malebranche is not only compatible with this neo-pantheism—more: it is a highly sophisticated modern-day version of how God can be here—all around us—and we be yet unaware: that is, he is everywhere yet unseen. Malebranche's mystical pantheism is the philosophical explanation of eco-theology. In other words, Malebranche is the how and eco-theology the what.

  [55:D-84] Thus what I have been trying to do in the exegesis—and which exhausts me—is deliberately on my own part again to do what I did in 2-3-74! But that was sparked by the messenger, and now I have him not. Hence I simply become more and more weary as world becomes more and more powerful over me. I seek to regain, to recapture, the Liberator of 2-74 to 2-75—whereupon world regained its power over me: the vision was lost and I fell back. I do not seek to gain Gnosis and liberation but to regain it; I had it and lost it! This is why trying to write Owl broke me: it is this that is the topic of Owl! Although my effort seems cerebral (having to do with thinking) it is really existential—but failing.

  Cerebral = knowledge = Gnosis; typically Faustian, as in Goethe's Faust, part one.

  VALIS built the maze and fell into it. The maze changes because it is alive.

  It is alive because it draws on and from the very thoughts of the creation trapped in it; his efforts to solve it are thoughts, and it is these thoughts that "fuel" it—i.e., it is one vast Chinese finger trap; the harder I try to get out, the more powerful world becomes. Hence hex. 47: my increasing exhaustion. What, then, should I do?

  [55:D-85] I was treated to a demonstration of YHWH: thought, word and reality were one, with no ideation separate from the word and no difference between the word—what I said—and the deed; it was the deed. Moreover, there was absolute a priori knowing (about Denise, about Tess). And this unitary "thing" (thought, word, act) is his power (omnipotence). He willed it so, by the use of Holy Wisdom, a separate hypostasis who is never apart from him.

  [...]

  The really extraordinary thing [is] that although I was terror-stricken I experienced absolute lucidity; I saw and understood my total situation perfectly, without degree and without reasoning it out. It was utter knowledge. I was—had been—destroying that which was of most value to me in the world: Tessa and Christopher: they are all I have. However good or bad Denise is intrinsically: that was secondary and tangential: God summoned me back to what was morally right and what existed: it was right and it was real. I had been occluded and severely jeopardized this most precious element in my life. This was no vague intimation; YHWH summoned me back from the lip of the abyss. What I stood to lose by my wrong actions was that which my very physical life depended on. I was on the brink of literal doom, yet indirectly so: Denise would destroy me not by what she did but by what I did. There was in this a vast moral summons, for in Judaism, God and morality are one and the same. This was the Lord God of Israel, not just a vague God but YHWH—and I knew it. This was the God of the Torah summoning me back to moral reality, with no choice; he willed it; he commanded me to return to life and what was right. (In him and by him the two are one and the same.) Thus morality and that which gives and sustains life stood bipolarized to immorality (sin) and that which takes life. Sin and death, then, were one. I sinned and I died. Abandoning Tessa and Christopher meant my death. Moreover, he gave me words to express all this to them (rather than just an understanding of it) so deed was conjoined to knowledge: what I knew I did—act and cognition being one, as morality (the law of God) and life were one.

  [...]

  It was 3-74 all over again, but with moral overtones. Carried beyond the irresistible to the terrifyingly irresistible. In this case I had fallen into mortal sin (this was not the case in 3-74; there I was in peril but not in peril of mortal sin); I could, then, lose my freedom or life, but here I lost my soul; I not only doomed myself—I damned myself. Here, power and wisdom prevailed; in 3-74 knowledge and love prevailed: this yesterday was YHWH, not Abba.

  The situati
on was intricate, unstable, ambiguous. There was a single right choice and it had to be made then and no later. God made it for me, based on his wisdom, power, and because it involved morality, goodness (as exemplified by the law). Thus, having justified me in 2-3-74, he forbade me from sinning any further; he intervened absolutely.* [...]

  This was an invasion of my psyche by absolute knowledge. It bore no relation to what I had up to that moment believed, wrongly believed. There was not even a sense of insight, of satori: it was pure knowledge, like a sort of seeing: a vision of the situation as it actually was. And it was primarily a moral seeing. Absolute moral rectitude occurred in me. It simply took place. All at once it was. I guess I saw it as God saw it. And how different that was! And absolute! It was not a viewpoint. It was knowing.