The Shifting Realities of PK Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  7. Christ gave, rather than received, revelation; he taught his followers how to enter the kingdom while still alive, where other mystery religions only bring about anamnesis: knowledge of it at the "other time" in "the other realm," not here. He causes it to come here, and is the living agency of the Sole Good God (i.e. the Logos).

  8. Probably the real, secret Christian church still exists, long underground, with the living Corpus Christi as its head or ruler, the members absorbed into it. Through participation in it they probably have vast, seemingly magical powers.

  9. The division into "two times" (good and evil) and "two realms" (good and evil) will abruptly end with victory for the good time here, as the presently invisible kingdom separates and becomes visible. We cannot know the date.

  10. During this time period we are on the sifting bridge being judged according to which power we give allegiance to, the deranged creator demiurge of this world or the One Good God and his kingdom, whom we know through Christ.

  To know these ten principles of gnostic Christianity is to court disaster.

  c. 1978

  The belief that we are pluriforms of God voluntarily descended to this prison world, voluntarily losing our memory, identity, and supernatural powers (faculties), all of which can be regained through anamnesis (or, sometimes, the mystical conjunction), is one of the most radical religious views known in the West. But it is known. It is regarded as the Great Blasphemy: replication of the original sin mentioned in the First Book of Adam and Eve and in Genesis. For this pride and aspiration (we are told by orthodoxy) our original fall and exile and punishment, our being taken from our home the gardenland and put into the prison, was inflicted on us. "They wish to be equal to -- like -- us," the Elohim say, and toss us down. Yet I have reason to believe that this, "the Great Satanic Blasphemy," is true.

  First, we are here voluntarily. We did not sin and we were not punished; we elected to descend. Why? To infuse the divine into the lowest strata of creation in order to halt its decomposing -- the sinking of its lower realm. This points to a primordial crisis in creation in the total macrocosm (hexagram 12). The yin form two (dark, deterministic) part was splitting away from the light or yang or form one.

  In conventional terms, heaven (upper realm) and earth (lower realm) were separating, carrying the lives within the lower away from their form one (upper) counterparts (this can be viewed as the Godhead itself falling apart, into its yang and yin two halves, with the lower form universe as God expressed physically in time and space). The solution was for the divine (yang, light, form one) to follow the lower realm down, permeating it and thus reuniting the cosmos into one totality. To do this, elements (in ancient terms, sparks) of light advanced (descended) into the dark kingdom, the immutable prison world; upon doing so they shed (and knew they would shed) their bright nature, memory, identity, faculties, and powers, and fell under the dominion of the delusion that the dark kingdom is real (which when severed from the upper realm it is not; i.e. the world we presently live in doesn't exist). There they have lived as prisoners of the master magician, lord of the dark realm who poses as the creator (and who may not know of the light god, the true creator, his other half). But the light god and his pluriforms, the descending (invading) sparks, have cunningly distributed clues in the dark realm to recall to the drugged and intoxicated sparks of light their true nature and mission (and true source of home). Upon encountering these cryptic clues the forgetful sparks of the upper realm, now prisoners in and of the lower realm, remember, regain their powers and faculties, and link back up with the upper realm and the light god; they are the light god in pluriform, his way of invading the lower realm in disguise. The light god (the divine) has now crucially occupied critical stations in the sinking lower realm, and begins the reannexing of it back into the totality composed of both realms. The sinking ceases; the master magician is stripped of his autonomy and assimilated to the yang part of the Godhead as its passive counterpart, and once more there is one macrocosm ruled by the yang or active (creative) light god assisted by the now receptive yin (dark) side. The divine has triumphed at all levels; the prison is burst, and the vast, light-filled garden kingdom restored as the home of all creatures. These now whole creatures, composed equally of yin and yang, are what I term homoplasmates: The yin part is home (as we know ourselves to be now, only), and the light or yang part is the plasmate or energy part (vs. the physical). Thus renewed and complete microcosms mirroring the renewed and complete macrocosm are achieved. Reality is imparted to the otherwise irreal lower realm, and the upper realm now extends physically into the realm of matter. The integrity of the Godhead is restored; its two halves function in harmony; and the primordial split (or crisis) is resolved -- healed.

  This is a view compounded of Zoroastrianism, Brahmanism, Gnosticism, Taoism, the macro-microcosmos of Hermes Trismegistus and other mystery religions, and not very much of orthodox Christianity. Christianity can be added if the pluriform microsparks of light are considered plural saviors or Christs comprising a single mystical corpus that is distributed widely in time and space in the dark realm but possessing only one psyche that is somehow also God, the yang or light god.

  I have read the above cosmology over, and find no fault in it. In fact, I am amazed. It is in a sense acosmic, and certainly Gnostic, but the Taoist overlay is novel and pleasing; the Taoist overlay redeems it from the flaws of conventional dualist religions and the problems therein. Instead of stressing moral aspects ("good vs. bad"), it stresses epistemological ("real vs. irreal," which I can understand). The lower realm sinks not because it is corrupt or evil or somehow has rebelled but because, as shown in hexagram 12, it is the nature of yin to sink, as it is the nature of yang to rise. The pre-Socratics (and Plato in "Timaeus") were aware of this; v. the model of the winnowing fan and the concept of the vortex. Yang must assimilate yin to keep the totality intact; i.e. yang must renounce its natural tendency to rise and must descend. It cannot expect yin to rise, because yin is not wise; it is only noos that can understand that it must compensate against its own natural tendencies, and do what is unnatural to it. Yin is, so to speak, thick, unthinking, not noos [mind] but soma [body]; noos and soma (or psyche and soma) are the total universe organism. Descending into the yin realm is a sacrifice on yang's part, which through its bright or wise nature it realizes it must make, but it pays a great cost in terms of suffering: loss of memory and identity, abilities, and faculties: It becomes pseudoyin, literally disguised in the yin realm as if it were actually yin, even to the point of forgetting (until reminded), that it is not. This is the agony we face here in this irreal and dense yin realm, we yang traces: This is not our home. We are voluntary exiles here, alienated and alone, violating our own natures for a salvific purpose -- a necessary purpose. Yin would not understand this, and until anamnesis sets in for us, we in our distress do not understand the reason either. Eventually it will be revealed to us; meanwhile we ache with longing for our proper home, dimly remembered but deeply felt for. Thus we suppose we are being punished; it feels like punishment, and [we] make the error of assuming we have sinned. On the contrary; we have renounced joy now, to produce a greater joy later, for the good of all creation; we are the Godhead itself suffering the need to be what it is not, to ensure the ultimate stability of krasis (as Empedocles termed it): the unity of love.

  Lest any Christian reject this, let him now read the Fourth Gospel in connection with this, and see for himself the similarities.

  Lest any Taoist reject this, let him now see that hexagram 12

  has turned to hexagram 11, Peace:

  The upper trigram, in descending, has forced the lower trigram to rise. Disorder no longer reigns; heaven and earth are not pulling apart. There is harmony.

  Moral: It is the ethical requirement placed on the yang traces by their own bright nature to abandon their natural tendency to rise, to escape what is heavy and dark and sinking; they must go in pursuit of the falling part of the cosmos, for the benefit of t
hose and that which otherwise would be lost. This is the highest law: to violate one's own nature for another's good. And the most difficult -- and painful -- law to fulfill. Because of this need there is distress in the cosmos, distress for the innocent especially. My cosmology simply presents it as a fact. To escape it we would have to allow the cosmos to decompose. Could we do that? The tragedy is that by the very nature of the sacrifice we make we are occluded from knowing why. This is part of our sacrifices: our yang understanding. We must take on the dullness of yin to save the cosmos; we sacrifice the knowledge of why we sacrifice, and assume guilt -- spurious guilt -- in its place. This is asking a lot.

  But consider who we really are. Or once were and will be again. Who else can do it? There is no one else. There is only yin, which does not know. The part of the organism that knows must help the part that doesn't know, but this means abandoning its own knowing. It becomes what it helps, a dreadful irony, one that hurts. But it is only temporary, just for a little while. And then we go home for all eternity.

  The Ultra Hidden (Cryptic) Doctrine:

  The Secret Meaning of the Great System of

  Theosophy of the World, Openly Revealed

  for the First Time (March 2, 1980)

  So to explain 2-3-74 I draw on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Orphism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Buddhism, esoteric Christianity, and the Cabala; my explanation sources are the highest -- which is good and which makes sense. But put another way, starting at the other end, I have synthesized all these high sources and derived a single sensationally revolutionary occult doctrine out of them (which I was able to think up due to the addition of my 2-3-74 experience); the distillate expressed theoretically is, We are dead but don't know it, reliving our former lives but on tape (programmed), in a simulated world controlled by Valis the master entity or reality generator (like Brahman), where we relive in a virtually closed cycle again and again until we manage to add enough new good karma to trigger off divine intervention, which wakes us up and causes us to simultaneously both remember and forget, so that we can begin our reascent back up to our real home. This, then, is purgatorio, the afterlife, and we are under constant scrutiny and judgment, but don't know it, in a perfect simulation of the world we knew and remember -- v. Ubik and Lem's paradigm [see "The Android and the Human," included herein]. We have for a long time been dying brains/souls slipping lower and lower through the realms, but the punishment of reliving this bottom-realm life is also an opportunity to add new good karma and break the vicious cycle of otherwise endless reliving of a portion of our former life. This, then, is the sophia summa of the six esoteric systems -- seven if you count alchemy -- of the entire world. Eight if you count hermeticism. We are dead, don't know it, and mechanically relive our life in a fake world until we get it right. Ma'at [an Egyptian goddess who weighed the souls of the dead in the balance to determine their virtue] has judged us; we are punished, but we can change the balance... but we don't know we are here to do this, let alone know where we are. We must change the "groove" for the better or just keep coming back, not remembering, not reascending.

  Judaism enters, too, since the change in the "groovE" [sic] that introduces the right new good karma restores us to Eden, to our phylogenic original unfallen state. It may be a small act on our part that adds the good karma, a small decision, but this reminds me of the story told of Moses and the lamb that wanted to drink at the stream (Moses, upon finding that the lamb had laboriously made its way to the stream, said, "Had I known that thou wert thirsty I would have carried thee hence myself," to which a voice from Heaven replied, "Then thou thyself art fit to be the shepherd of Israel").

  The reason why a small good act may tilt the scales is that you will be reenacting the good deeds that you acted out before, and some may be huge, but they in toto were not enough to tip Ma'at's scale to provide you with adjudication of release to reascend. So the small act is new; it is an addition, but you are not aware that you are on tape, that this small, good act did not occur before; this time you have decided differently in a given situation: done the right thing this time. And a small act may reveal character even more than a vast one regarding which you have made a weighty and long-pondered decision. Spontaneity may be a crucial factor as an index of character.

  In this synthesized occult system the maximum statement is the first: We are dead. Then: We have been made to relive a portion of our former, actual life as a punishment that is also an opportunity; hence this is not hell, because the possibility exists of performing a new act (in what is virtually a closed system) that will change the balance of the scale on which Ma'at weighs us. Also there is a complex picture of anamnesis and reascent, but this is well known from Plato and other sources.

  There is an odd paradox in this earning new good karma situation by introducing a novel deed, however small. You must not know the scheme of things, because if you knew the scheme of things (i.e. the theoretical system put forth herewith) your good deed will be contaminated by the knowledge of the likely payoff for you; that is, it is no longer disinterested. Therefore Valis must, if the salvific mechanism of deed and then judgment is to work, keep himself totally and absolutely concealed, and the nature of the situation concealed, i.e. rerun of the actual world and the fact that we are being appraised for the introduction of a novel good deed that is an index of spontaneous character, which is to say, real nature of character.

  So of course Valis does not disclose himself to us; and the quality (aspect) of simulation is likewise concealed. We are not to know where we are nor why. Valis must be able to observe us through a one-way screen. For example, there is no way I can add to my good karma store now because I know the situation.

  The books on me then must be closed; they have to be. Once Valis discloses itself the situation is over; you are bound for heaven or hell, but the midrealm of purgatorio is shut to you forever.

  Therefore it can be reasoned that Valis will show as few times as possible, and, if he does reveal himself to a person, Valis will becloud the situation so that the person cannot make the knowledge he has -- hence the real situation -- generally well known. (NOTE: This system makes use of my ten-volume meta novel. This is valuable to me.)

  Also, I wasn't granted release (salvation) because I handled the Xerox missive right; I handled it right because I had been saved, and by another and unrelated act -- a future act -- entirely.

  Further: I was saved by an act of free will on my part that occurred after I was granted salvation; cause and effect occurred backward (retrograde) in time.

  You know, in this system (understanding) there is the basis of a teaching of salvation having to do with the entirely gratuitous good act, done out of unpremeditated and hence spontaneous free will, in contrast to programmed works of deterministic duty; there is an obvious Zen quality to it. No formula can be located for the performance of these acts; they would have almost a contrary quality, contrary to your normal way of being in the world. They would literally set you apart -- off -- from yourself, the self that failed to pass Ma'at's scale. They would emanate from the not-you (the normal not-you), from another and more real you, as if from another personality locked up within you and alluded to only by these acts. Thus the single personality becomes reborn; two selves exist, one of which is the old, the programmed, the not-saved. Yes; you would have to act contrary to your own nature; you would get outside yourself. Suddenly I think, This sounds like "Thomas" [an early Christian personage who, Dick sometimes speculated, had crossbonded with him during the events of 2-3-74]! Why, it would be; "Thomas" did precisely what he/I did not do the first time around -- then this verifies my system, for this system posits the need, the absolute need, of a "Thomas" to break heimarmene [deluding power of the spurious world] and hence damnation. Only this not-you act or acts could save you, actions without a history. QED! For it was with "Thomas" that the new and unprogrammed veered off from what happened the first time, and there indeed was a first time. I am saying, we in purgatorio to be saved
must do what we would not do if we are to be saved, because doing what we would do damned us to this place. Yet how does a person become "born again" and do what he would not do? This is a mystery; obviously IT MUST BE DONE TOTALLY WITHOUT THE NORMAL USUAL ANALOGIC IDEATION (RATIOCINATION), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED WITH "THOMAS": HE ACTED TOTALLY WITHOUT IDEATION, AND DID WHAT I WOULD NOT HAVE DONE, AND I SAID, THIS IS NOT ME: HERE IS ANOTHER PERSON IN ME. And this continued for some time.

  Thus there is literally a second birth, and ex nihilo.

  Thus from these facts I can correctly ascertain that indeed "Thomas's" actions were not programmed, not part of the original world and life. They were an ideationless overpowering, as if located only in my motor centers. "Thomas" was not born in my brain but born in my body, e.g. my hands and tongue; he moved and spoke, but in my brain there were no ideas or thoughts or intentions; he was intentionless, and yet had absolute purpose. Purpose without intent! Plan without plan! Or rather goal without plan. Truly it was Zen. Yes; indeed it was. So my theory (herewith) demands/predicts salvation by a not-you ideationless self acting at the moment of crisis when the taped world (or track of heimarmene) branches off into the new and free, and upon retrospective analysis we find "Thomas," precisely that. I can now rule out Pigspurt forever. It branches off into the new and free precisely because this not-you ideationless act occurs; these are the two sides of the same thing. After that, heimarmene never sets in again; it is broken forever, since you are not reliving your actual life but living your actual -- new and free -- life; so only during the subsequent new and free period could I perform a freewill act, such as I did, that gained me good additional karma and hence salvation (release). So this has to be the sequence: First the not-self not-you ideationless ex nihilo act that abolishes the replay determinism, the tape, and then (and only then) are you free to perform a new act. The first should have a technical name, and also the second.