The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

Kafka's Castle will be parodied in Owl's relationship to the university.

  ***

  [73:32] Owl

  In the first mode the computer (plasma) is punishing and severe. In the second, arbitrarily capricious. In the third, rewarding.

  It introduces the alien in order to add something new (into his mind) to exalt him to his fourth period.

  The alien mind introduction is the whole resolution of the novel. It brings Owl to his fourth period through the Ditheon psyche.➊ But he tells the plasma, "It wasn't worth it"; thus I indict my whole search for knowledge as futile, which it seems to be, since it continues on, forever restlessly striving Faust-like.

  Of course the war—and the alien—must be mentioned early in the novel, before Owl enters the construct. He has psychologically retreated from the war and into his music. (Draw on Beethoven's feelings toward Napoleon and the siege of Vienna; posit a Great Terror general.) At the end, Owl winds up (like Bobby Fischer) futilely passing out antiwar leaflets in defiance of sedition laws; this is his resolution, and, minute as it is, it is the only heroic deed he ever performed (since it means jail or death; I will draw on my tax protest stand for this).

  The crippled dwarf Nick Nicholson in the construct; he is based on someone Owl really knew in the actual world. Under wartime government law he is "put to sleep" because he is damaged physically. In this future world of genetic engineering Owl accepts this—until the alien mind is grafted into his—and Ditheon occurs. In the real world the dwarf is destroyed before Owl enters the construct. As I say, he unprotestingly accepts it—although he does feel grief. But he does accept it as inevitable. So until Ditheon (fusion with the alien) occurs Owl not only shows no interest in the war—more, he withdraws from it into his art (and the allied search for knowledge; this search is to find the basics for a fourth period vision). The plasma's decision was wise and necessary: the construct wasn't working out (because Owl always winds up seeking out the plasma), and time and money are running out for Owl. His resources are limited (tell me about it). In fact it was a brilliant decision by the plasma, but not ad hoc; it had been working on this problem before Owl hired it away. This of course would be stipulated in/at the opening of the novel.

  So in his fourth period he abandons—not just his art—but his identity as an artist. He has become one-sided, to the detriment of his spiritual, psychological wholeness. Where the seeds of restored wholeness are laid down is in his relationship with the girl (Mary? BJ?) in the construct. (She plays the part of Gretchen.)

  Could there be something like in "Frozen Journey" where the plasma (ship) confers with Mary (Martine Kemmings)? She is like Hoffmann's muse Nicklausse in Tales.51 She could be a government monitoring agent, whose job it is to see that Owl—as an artistic resource—is protected. So she is not a creation of/by the plasma; she represents a government regulatory agency—as Mary Lorne represents the college in "The Exit Door Leads In." The government (à la Ursula) is worried about Owl's mental health: "spiraling into himself and slowly going crazy."

  Although she knows that Owl's political stance will result in his death she understands that it is necessary in order to save him spiritually. She does her best—uses her official influence—to abort not his stand but his execution—in vain. She shoots one of the soldiers in the execution squad—and can get away with it due to her political position (like a party commission).

  Totalitarian society: one party; mixture of CP and NSDAP. But she is, after all, a thoroughly political person (somewhat like Kathy, a police agent leading a double life).

  Since people don't age, formal rites of passage are very important; the stagnation problem is not unique to Owl by any means but is officially recognized. The "one day nothing new came into his mind" phenomenon (problem) is recognized as real and as grave. The dialectic is necessary to start up growth, and this is the ideological theory behind the grafting of the alien mind and Owl's. Does this mean that the war was deliberately started by the government in order to give a challenge and stimulus to the people? At the end, Owl suspects this.

  By introducing the alien into his mind the government brings the war to him, the war he has retreated from. He furiously resents this, even though it does spark his sought-for fourth period. Actually, the government is trying to help him, but he rejects that help—he rejects them and their war.

  ➊ So Owl does reach a fourth period successfully, but in it he ceases to quest for knowledge, and, instead, acts (politically), not as an artist but as one who cares what becomes of other men; his elitist attitude is gone. Thus the fourth period is radically different; it doesn't involve music and creativity and art. Here the side of Beethoven passionately involved in the cause of human freedom comes out, surmounting the music entirely.

  [73:54] Nothing is what it seems, but the war is between Christianity and the Empire; but what we call Christianity is the Empire, and the true Christians are a Celtic-Orphic mystery religion. Further, Christ's kingdom is the "invisible secret Commonwealth" of Gaelic mythology, and it is right here unseen.

  No; this is all nonsense. What I'm dealing with—as I realized last night—is the way the whole universe—reality itself—behaves. Today's insights are idiotic.

  Folder 53

  January 1982

  [53:C-8] There is something terrible and terrifying throughout VALIS and it is coupled with wisdom. Agape is not the topic: war, judgment and death are, carrying out in full the dream in Tears. It is all very convincing. The novel partakes of epic greatness. Also, it is a story of madness converted into faith through—due to—suffering. But this suffering itself pertains to death, to slaying. Slaying: that is the basic theme of VALIS, and Shiva is the correct name for the deity.

  It is a very strong novel and a great, great one, a true epic of the human soul and spirit. But it deals with judgment and war and death.

  Slaying, not healing. The slaying even spread out to include Sophia, who is the Savior; the awful awesome power of YHWH is told of: it breaks out in all its destructiveness. Thus (I say) my 2-74 and 2-75 experience was that of Jacob Boehme and the dialectic in which the demonic power within God was revealed, and only the "bright" side of the dialectic—i.e., wisdom, logos—confines the "dark" or demonic side to slaying the wicked and thus sparing the sheep. So (finally) I say—my experience was Boehme's, and it was of God himself, and he is terrible but just.

  The demonic or insane side of God is barely contained by the irrational or logos or wisdom or "bright" side: a dreadful theophany indeed. And it is indubitably—beyond doubt—authentic. I know this from having read Paul Tillich's book. I have encountered the demonic, insane, slaying, "dark" side of God—and seen it contained by the "bright" or logos or rational or wisdom side—i.e., in the dialectic—so this is a profound and absolutely veridical experience of the Godhead, exactly as Boehme experienced it. VALIS, then, narrates one of the great encounters in human history between a given human being—myself—and God. The dual nature of God is all summed up by the dual nature of the third eye and the beam of pink light—wisdom and death.

  [53:C-14] Hypnopompic vision: we live over and over, but because it is erased each time, this paradox results: it is als ob only one time (that is, it is again and again and it is but once). So Christianity is true—and also the pan-Indian doctrine of reincarnation is true; both are equally so. Now, this is a linear journey, and it is eternal (goes on and on forever) until we are saved. And when we are saved we are lifted up very abruptly without warning vertically, at right angles—by a pulley (as in the 17th century poem "The Pulley"52), like cargo on a ship, all encompassed in a net of ropes like a little cage of extrication and salvation—lifted up to safety. And what causes this? Anamnesis: recovered memory—loss of (more accurately) the loss of memory of all the previous times; the instant we remember (fail to forget) all the previous times, why, at that instant (2-74) we are saved—lifted up, by Christ. And what causes us to remember? To know. To know (i.e., gnosis) and to remember (anamnesis) are one. And why do
we know? Through the training of the intellect; it is an intellectual matter. And why did I remember? It had to do with time. The illusion of time and the breaking of that illusion (which is the dimension or receptacle in which this journey that is linear is repeated throughout infinity); I broke it when I was about 21 years old by reading Maimonides' Guide to the Perplexed, an old Hebrew book.53 And because it was old, and pious, and Hebrew, two things happened: two "trackings" (lives, reincarnations) became identical due to this common element; that is, in two of them I did the same thing: read this book, and so, because of the way two coaxial worlds can operate off the same common essence or matrix, they became one and thus converted over or passed over each into the other, as if I had traveled back in time. That is one of the two causes of my salvation and it is literal and real: by reading Maimonides in two different lives at two different places and times, these lives became one (viz: my meta-abstraction); this is because of Plato's eidei, the fact of a given eidei, instantiating itself multiple times and places and yet being—remaining—unitary (viz: there is only one Guide to the Perplexed); this is what 2-74 was all about, anamnesis and the meta-abstraction. So half of the reason for my salvation had to do with the fact that (1) we live lives again and again but forget; (2) Plato's forms-metaphysics ("coaxial worlds") is the case; (3) there was a single object at two times (now and in the distant past) and two places (USA and Syria/Africa). (Viz: The PTG world that I saw is the Africa of the far past where I first read the Maimonides book, perhaps at the time it was written—it was written in "Felix": Arabia!)

  But there is another and equally necessary reason for my salvation. And it is not a "natural" reason but has to do with grace, hence the God of Moses (the God of the prophet Moses and of Moses Maimonides, YHWH); by voluntarily picking up and reading this particular book two times in two lives I found favor with YHWH and it was he who through his mercy (i.e., grace) caused me in 2-74 to remember—and as soon as I remembered I was instantly lifted up at right angles (vertically) to the way we live horizontally for all eternity and yet only once, until through his grace we are saved.

  [53:D-10] My God—this revelation of earlier tonight: it signifies something else I hadn't realized. This eternal "horizontal tracking and retrack ing" is broken only when and if anamnesis and noesis (the meta-abstraction) occurs, whereupon you are "netted" up along the vertical axis as if by pulley—this is precisely the pan-Indian (Hindu and Buddhist) notion of moksa, liberation from the "weary wheel" of birth, death and rebirth; and in the pan-Indian system restored memory of past lives (or a life) is, as with Plato's anamnesis, the "access key." This "vertical" extrication is the whole point of Buddhist and Hindu awakening and hence liberation—and in connection with this realization I suddenly have a partial memory that part of this revelation had to do with Nirvana: myself and Nirvana (and if not this revelation then at any rate a very recent one). What, then, I am saying is that 3-74 may well not only be the doorway to Nirvana but may have been Nirvana itself. The cessation of birth and death: the cycle based on illusion. Free at last.

  [53:D-12] The vision of vertical extrication from endless horizontal tracking is highly significant: an orthogonal axis is represented here, a dimension like a spatial 4th, unknown to us. [...] This is why space and time and causation were so changed for me in 3-74, if not obliterated entirely, and why I saw time as a fourth spatial axis: salvation utilizes one additional dimension or axis. It has the effect of breaking the power of heimarmene by virtue of the fact that it enters at right angles to all known axes. [...] It may well be, then, that in 3-74 I was not just seeing time as space but was seeing along an additional axis—five instead of four, with time transformed into space thereby. This 5th axis may be necessary if you are to discriminate set from ground and discern Valis.

  It is through the 5th axis that the two spatiotemporal continua juxtapose, as if by a "fold," impossible to our four known axes. And I may find that the meta-abstraction was a conceiving of this 5th axis! [...]

  Well, then, the third eye of discernment opened (Dibba Cakkhu) in 3-74 due to the 2-74 meta-abstraction, and because of this my four dimensional world became five dimensional; and all that I saw arises out of this (e.g., the plasmate, the King Felix cypher, set to ground, Valis camouflaged and here normally invisible to us, etc.).

  Biochip symbiote. Mycelia, vine, its branches growing like a circulatory system. "Firebright." The logos in the human brain.

  Ach! Temporal parallaxis is at right angles to the other three spatial axes. Formerly it was experienced only as time; now it is a spatial axis that revealed 4 depths on the same page of print of Tears. The fifth dimension then enters as time (to replace it), but it is another kind of time (apparently); in any case, this fourth spatial axis ("temporal parallaxis") permits the set-ground discrimination, etc. If I had not seen what I call "temporal parallaxis" I could not imagine it. My God; this is all the case!

  In this fifth dimension time, things are "now" if they possess a common constituent; viz: "now" signifies any and all of our fourth dimensional worlds where such a common constituent as, e.g., The Guide to the Perplexed is; this is what the meta-abstraction pertains to: this other kind of time: the illo tempore or dream time, in which one and the same unitary object is at two times and places in terms of how we experience time and place in a four dimensional world; but in a five dimensional world, that golden fish sign was in USA 1974 and Syria A.D. 70 simultaneously; this is how, e.g., the Eucharist works, how through the sacrament "time is overcome"—normal time becomes space—"temporal parallaxis" and a different time, an added (fifth) dimension enters, and the meta-abstraction was a realization on my part of this "coaxiality." Then the meta-abstraction as an ultra cognitive act did usher it all in, but note! The golden fish sign is (and did serve in that case, 2-74) a sacramental—holy—object (filled with grace). (A vessel for grace; it was not simply old; it was sacred.)

  [53:E-1]* There are complex organisms that live in 5-D space-time (i.e., hypertime) and they are not perceptible by/to us, e.g., Valis, the plasmate. We can't discriminate them. They have contacted me. Their language is color. (Color, math and music form a unity.) This was the phosphene graphic, pure language. They grow through our 4-D world like mycelia, biochip, symbiote. It was Pythagoras they first contacted. Our world to them is like an ocean.

  [...]

  My 5-D realm is precisely what Plotinus was speaking of: concentric rings, not a fall in space and time. It is the realm of the sacred, of Act III of Parsifal; hence, "Here, my son, time turns into space." It is the realm of Kosmos Noetos, hence logos, hence the realm of Christ.

  [53:E-3] We are as in an ocean to them, and we are like lower life forms whom they are trying to contact. But they are very different from us. Thus although they are ETIs they are not from another planet, star-system, etc., but are right here (except in a 5-D world; they can see us but we can't see them).† Plotinus' concentric rings of emanation explain it. Here there is atomization, causation, etc. There, unity exists. Structure—organization—is pure, which is to say, these beings are in a sense incorporeal, yet in another sense they are not; but here, we see not the total being as a unity but rather discrete physical components that add up to nothing, e.g., Valis. We see at best a perturbation of the reality field. My "surd." Their language is color-music-number (ratio).

  For 60 seconds last night I was in direct two-way contact with them. Upon my figuring out that there is such a thing as "self-authenticating" information, at once I asked for what I call "cypher source verification" and got several, fired very fast, mostly sequences (as are the Fibonacci numbers), as if they had them ready for use at a moment's notice. Sequence patterns, intervals, etc.; I don't remember but they were sufficient, I remember that. They were ebullient; they had achieved their objective. They had proven their external-source origin, the information was not originating in my own mind. The two-way exchange followed the classic lines envisioned by our scientists as to how we would send signal and response back and forth w
ith ETIs, that is, other planets. But this is not other planets; it is a 5-D world that is now and here (known to Plotinus as an ontologically higher realm or concentric ring). I guess you would say that these are the "gods" of Egypt, India and Greece.*

  [...]

  This is the sacred breaking into the profane, and is certainly illo tempore.

  [53:E-5] The color, musical score, math triune info: like an illuminated manuscript from the Medieval period. Ach: I have always said that the plasmate info (e.g., King Felix) looked like an illuminated letter, suggesting that the idea of an illuminated letter was derived from a perception of the plasmate. Color, coded in as an essential integral part. So here, the illuminated letter or word becomes musical annotation (which adds the element of music) and at fixed ratio intervals (math):

  But the 4th note doubles back, and what is formed is the long spiral of the Fibonacci numbers. The colors signal the phosphenes of the receiver and so are so-to-speak read backward, i.e., in terms of their phosphene analogs. A pure concept is conveyed using no words; all three axes are nonverbal (music, math ratios, color).

  Pythagoras, phosphenes, symbiote, biochip, mycelia, vine, circulatory system.

  [53:E-7] The concept I want is: the 5-D world can intersect with our 4-D world without our being aware of it (this intersecting) or the 5-D world itself, even though the 5-D world is in some sense corporeal; this precisely is the coaxiality and precisely what the meta-abstraction pertains to. The best example is Tears; it is one thing, a unitary object, but it occupies one "life" here in our 4-D world and tells one story here; in the 5-D world it leads another "life" and tells another story even though the text is the same in both worlds. However, in the 5-D world, because of the 4th spatial axis (which we experience as time), there are multiple, discriminated sequences of text (and not in 2-D but 3-D). This is how one object can be at—seen at—two times and two places and yet remain one object; viz: two "worlds" operate off it using it as a shared or common matrix.