In Pursuit of Valis

by Philip K. Dick

  (1978)

  Thoughts upon reading the first half of VALIS: we are in a situation like the cold-pac in UBIK. It is a hologram reality; time, space, causality & ego are not real—the world (phenomenal world) is not real but projected. We have pre-programmed lock-in tapes synchronized with the total outer matrix. Subliminal cues & info are fired at us constantly; “reality” is really information (as I saw); we are a brain, [ ... ] the controllers are the 3-eyed telepathic deaf, mute builders with crab-claws; this explains who they are. They can readjust our hologram at will. We are under their dominion, & we perform a useful cerebral function. They equal Valis which equals Ubik & which breaks through on the one-way “eerie manifestation” basis which Lem depicts. It is a spurious reality & their technology generates it, & although they aid & inform us they also occlude & control us (this is “astral determinism”). They can & do intervene in their own system; we know this as “God.” They use camouflage & mimesis re their presence here. There is a teaching-machine element involved. Timeo cognere. [I fear to know.] In a sense the 3-eyed people in their bubble looking down at us were not so much physicians but surgeons, using laser beams to recontour our hologram. They are not in the hologram but above it (i.e., outside the cold pac, they’ve sent Zebra-Valis-Ubik in). Because of my book VALIS they’re going to zap me.

  [....]

  1) We are the project.

  2) We are in the maze, which is irreal.

  3) The 3-eyed people observe us from outside the maze.

  4) The project operates through a dialectic; it is in flux.

  5) It is irrational; its creator is irrational.

  6) We are stationary; time, ego & causality don’t exist.

  7) Human saboteurs have begun operations here in the maze to help us. They (the human ones) are under the direction of a vast information entity which camouflages itself. It got itself born here & was killed & then spread out discorporate subsuming & informing humans counter to the control (of us) (& our world) by the maze & its creator & controllers. It is rational.

  8) In essence the liberators-saboteurs work to enlighten us with knowledge of our true condition, which is withheld from us by the deluding maze which generates both positive & negative hallucinations that we’re rigidly locked into. We do not ordinarily guess that our “world” is irreal, that it is a maze, a project, that its creator is insane or that the 3-eyed people gaze down at us dispassionately as if we’re pond life-lower life forms.91) The maze-project is like a prison in which we’re enslaved. The Black Iron Prison.

  10) In essence, the rational (Valis/Zebra/Ubik) has invaded the irrational maze/prison/project.

  11) We are sick or injured or insane/occluded due perhaps to a toxicity of the maze (“the bichlorides: a very poisonous poison.”)[179]

  12) So Valis is an information center disseminating the truth, & also liberating us. It may be a product of the maze-project, evolving within it & then liberating itself which is to say us. The purpose of the maze & its dialectic—& the problems it poses (esp. epistemologically)—may have been to produce Valis.

  (1978)

  A close reading of MITHC shows it is not an alternate world novel. There is only one real world: ours. Juliana finds (figures?) this out & tells Abendsen that his book is true. By implication, their world is a pseudo-world. Hence MITHC is an early pseudo-world novel of mine, like JOINT & EYE & STIGMATA & UBIK & MAZE. Now, if in 2-3-74 I had an experience combining Abendsen’s & Tagomi’s, & found myself in TEARS, does that make this a pseudo-world, a dokos over TEARS? I think this is the whole point, it is a matrix entity about which there can be varying views some false, one correct, & TEARS is correct. These are not true alternate worlds. How these dokos views come into existence I do not know. Or is there just the one Dokos world which we normally experience, beyond which or under which lies TEARS? Then TGLH[180] to MITHC as TEARS to our world—a vast mystery! & one about which I have no theory. TEARS depicts a tyranny!

  Since I didn’t know the future (2-3-74) I can only suppose that another self exists in me which not only knew the future but the true state of affairs.

  (1979)

  reality—My God; it’s specifically stipulated that Ubik is the—not a—reality support! (“He causes to exist what-

  ever exists”; functional description of YHWH!)

  The underlying secret (cf. Hamlet & The Bacchae) is that the true king (YHWH) (Ubik) has been deposed & an impostor (Palmer Eldritch) rules in his place, as (if he were) him. (Bacchae—the Christ story—Hamlet—TEARS—& also STIGMATA & “Faith”) That’s part one. Part two is that the true God (YHWH, Ubik) has filtered back in on the periphery. But the impostor is at the civil & church center. Thus people think they are worshipping Christ-YHWH-Ubik but aren’t; they are under a spell (of delusion—which Christ/YHWH freed me of in 2-74).

  (1979)

  Consider my boundless & insatiable interest in spiritual matters—there’s no sign of it in TDHG [THE DARK-HAIRED GIRL, see Glossary]—yet I had a Bible with me in Canada. Yet consider how Acts read upon my seeing the cipher in TEARS—the plasmite; the test became alive. It was a living thing. Like my dreams of the pages of the Great Book. I was in touch with the information basis underlying the epiphenomenal world.

  Between what I experienced (2-74 to 2-75) & what I’ve learned—

  I experienced reality as knowledge—not reduced to information. But the primary information from which reality stems: what the rabbis call “the formula” for creation, & the answers to all problems—i.e. solutions (explanations).

  So in my incompleteness I was driven along a collision course with (to) disaster; but Valis (YHWH-Christ) converted the disaster into the raw materials out of which there came instantly (!) a new me, a complete me, yoked to Christ himself as the presiding priest of this eucharist in which he sacrificed himself to renew me.

  & when I saw Valis—& was communicated to by Valis—I saw him, the high priest presiding at this eucharist. The epiphenomenal universe became him, body & blood: the Cosmic Christ.

  In TDHG it is evident that I am desperately trying to find a center (omphalos) for/to my life, but that I was failing; I was still “stateless.” [ ... ] In contrast to TDHG period I have found authenticity—sein.[181] I have made one wise decision after another. Look at my providing help to Messiah[182]—contrast that to when I used to buy dope.

  (1979)

  I just now looked over DI [THЕ DIVINE INVASION]. As I recently realized about VALIS, the dialectic that is the inner life of God—as revealed to Boehme & explicated later by Schelling—& commented on by e.g., Tillich[183]— is presented as the very bases of the book. In VALIS it is expressed dramatically as world-order in which the irrational confronts the “bright” or rational, designated (properly) Logos. In DI this same dialectic reappears & this time is stated to be the two sides of God (rather than world order; that is, in DI it is now correctly seen to be within God himself!): it is now (in DI) between Emmanuel who is the terrible, destroying “solar heat” warring side—& Zina who is loving, playful, tender, associated with bells & flowers; & what unifies the two at last (by the way: it is she who takes the lead in restoring memory & hence unification: Emmanuel is the side that has forgotten—i.e., is impaired; she has not & is not is not impaired) is play. She plays, & Emmanuel has a secret desire to play.

  So both novels basically deal with the dialectic that I experienced as the nature of Valis & which I construe to be the dynamic inner life of God. If you superimpose both books, then, you get this equation:

  Really, then, DI simply continues the fundamental theme of VALIS—but does not seem to do so—not unless one perceives this theme & what it is (the dialectic that is the dynamic inner life of God). DI is not so loose a sequel to VALIS as it might seem (by in the shift from Gnosticism, the present, realism, to Kabala, the future, fantasy).

  (1981)

  GALACTIC POT-HEALER shows the very real possibility of encroaching madness. The archetypes are out of control. Water—the ocean
itself—which is to say the unconscious, is hostile & rises to engulf. The book is desperate & frightened, & coming apart, dream-like, cut off more & more from reality. Flight, disorganization: the way has almost run out. Those elements dealt with in earlier novels—ominous elements—now escape my control & take over. What Brunner[184] said, “That one got out of control” is correct & has vast psychological significance.

  & yet I did not become psychotic. Why not? What happened?

  Very simply the meta-abstraction was the birth of higher reason in me. Specifically & precisely Logos. It was noesis, but, more, it was Logos itself. & Logos—not just as reason, although it is that—but Christ: Christ is the power of the rational principle itself.

  The Dialectic that I experienced in 3-74 was between the irrational & the rational, in me, in world, in God. The rational won.

  The issue is properly stated in VALIS, which shows not only a return of control but is an account of victory— in the form of rationality, of Logos itself—over madness; I am not only rational, I also depict as open, autobiography, this battle in me & this victory. Ursula is both right & wrong. “Phil Dick is moving toward madness”[185] does not apply to VALIS but to GALACTIC POT-HEALER; already with TEARS & then more so in SCANNER reality has re-

  entered; I am again in touch with the real.

  [....]

  VALIS, is, then, the return from madness or near-madness, an account of a prior inner struggle & not a symptom of that struggle still going on. By the time I wrote VALIS the battle had been successfully won; & the proof of this is DI &, most of all, BTA[186] in which Angel Archer is (as I have already realized) the rational principle in me, which is Logos, that is to say Christ, itself speaking; the victory by the “bright” side in me is total. Thus I was saved by Christ as the inbreaking of the rational principle, Logos or reason itself.

  The meta-abstraction is the moment in my life in which the rational principle entered, in-broke, was born; thus it is correct to say, in that moment Christ was born in me, & the year that followed was Christ in me, enthusiasmos by Christ: his kingdom or, more correctly, kingship.

  [....]

  Ursula is right to see me—my mind—as threatened by ominous encroaching madness, but VALIS is a lucid post mortem, a deliberate & rational study, of this issue. This battle, & the victory of the rational in me (experienced as Valis, Logos or Christ). [ ... ] I came through & emerged victorious: but just barely. GALACTIC POT-HEALER shows how grave the issue was, & this was written before the main thrust of the need & suffering hit (from 1969 on).

  SCANNER then, shows that human reason returned sometime after GALACTIC POT-HEALER. But in 2-74 divine reason (noesis), the Logos, Christ himself, entered me or occurred as if in response to the last savage attack—the xerox missive—of the years of problems I had gotten myself into by my madness, folly, drug-use, etc. VALIS shows me completely aware of the situation (encroaching madness) & completely back in control—which DI & then to an absolute degree BTA verified. There is in me the voice of reason—the AI voice. But that voice became more than a voice; in 274 it broke in as the principle of reason itself, specifically as Plato’s noesis: the highest act of cognition known to man. Thus 2-74 has both noesis & Logos & hence Christ.

  & the ultimate overflow of grace in me shows up in my giving to others; I am not only strong enough for myself alone—more: starting with my sending the money to Covenant House.[187][ ... ]

  I who lost normal reason, got back in the end Holy reason (“He who loses his life will save it”): Christ as Logos. & VALIS correctly tells this story: madness & drugs caused by Gloria’s suicide, & finally the inbreaking of the rational, Logos itself (seen in terms of world!).

  Now, it is certainly wonderful to realize that I am all right, now; that in fact I am even able to help others as well as myself. But the flip side is: I did slide into psychosis, & POT revealed it, & I wrote POT before Nancy left me.[188] [ ... ] I guess my realization came (last night) when, after reading POT & realizing that I did become psychotic I then picked up SCANNER. I read here & there. The appalling horror of that book! To go into that from psychosis; that is, how terrible a fate awaited me. What saved me was my love for those people: Luckman, [ ... ] Jerry Fabin [ ... ] & Donna [ ... ][189] which ties in with TEARS & the scene at the all-night gas station.

  Thinking back to when I wrote POT: I felt so strongly—& correctly—at the time that when it came time, in writing the book to have the theophany occur (i.e., for Glimmung[190] to show himself) I had nothing to say, nothing to offer because I knew nothing. Oh, & how I sensed this lack of knowledge! & now this is precisely what I do know because now I have experienced it (2-3-74).

  In a way I better depict the 3-74 theophany (of Valis) in DI than in VALIS itself. In any case if you superimpose the two novels it is there—precisely what I lacked when I wrote POT—& knew I lacked, as a human, as a writer; I had no ideas about the theophany at all, & yet by the time I wrote DI it came easily, that which would not & could not come with POT; that in writing POT that exactly was where I reached the end-wore out & died as a writer; scraped the bottom of the barrel & died creatively & spiritually. What misery that was! Paisley shawl, hoop of water, hoop of fire;[191] how wretched it was; how futile.

  Strange that later (1974) I experienced what I had yearned to know so that I could continue the logical organic growth & forward development of my writing. That was when I wore out: trying to depict a theophany. & that is what I legitimately later on (in the VALIS trilogy) could, do. But oh the years of suffering! & yet—if I became psychotic in writing POT—if POT shows signs of psychosis, & it does—it is not because I experienced & knew God but precisely because I did not. & thus the VALIS books are the opposite, are sane, are grounded in experience & in reality because by then I had experienced God; hence my creative life (not just my spiritual life) resumed; & with it my sanity. Thus in a very real sense my sanity depended on my experiencing God, because my creative life logically demanded it—& [ ... ] my sanity depended on my writing.

  (1981)

  Break the power of fake world by means of info. (1)UBIK (2)2-3-74 hence VALIS & JOIN & MAZE etc. VALIS logically follows in the 10-volume metanovel that leapt off with MAZE. No one has noticed that VALIS picks up where MAZE left off. The epistemology is unbroken & cumulative. VALIS shows I am questioning whether world is real; retroactively it shows I meant it in the prior 10 novels [see second chart below].[192]

  Isn’t it perfectly clear in UBIK that world is not real but Ubik is, & Ubik is Logos/YHWW. Likewise Valis in VALIS.

  VALIS is the cipher book-code book—to the whole 10-volume metanovel & will someday be read as such. & VALIS is Gnostic/Mani but secretly Holy Mother Church

  —which explains TEARS-that is, the Acts material in it. As with God’s strategy, the sequence is “out of sequence.” Viz: the key piece—VALIS—came last. Until it the others did not make sense—i.e., they were taken to have been written as fiction & hence hypothetical. VALIS retroactively re-interprets them—shows them in a light that could not be anticipated by an analysis of them—until VALIS came out; typical of the pattern strategy of the wise horn in its Dialectical Combat-Game.[193] Here is a big realization & unexpected: VALIS in itself means nothing!

  (1981)

  DI is a conventional romance exactly as John Clute[194] says; it breaks no new theological ground whatsoever & should not be taken seriously ... except for the light it casts in amplifying material in VALIS.

  VALIS deals with the irreducible primary religious sense: God as terrifying & fascinating simultaneously, with the solution being Christ & only Christ; there is no other solution. VALIS states the problem (familiar to all truly religious humans) & the correct—& sole—solution. From a religious viewpoint then, it is authentic & basic. & it is indubitably firsthand, not Derived from Book. Thus it is an extraordinary religious confession & resolution to the problems raised & confronted in that confession, so it is not just a confession but seeks & finds an answer.

&n
bsp; (1981)

  The issue is not reality or ontology but consciousness—the possibility of pure, absolute consciousness occurring. In terms of which material things (objects) become language or information, conveying or recording or expressing meaning or ideas or thoughts: mind using reality as a carrier for information, as a lp groove is used to carry information: to record, store & play it back. This is the essential issue: this use of material reality by mind as a carrier for information by which information is processed—& this is what I saw that I called Valis, & anyone who reads VALIS & thinks it is just a rehash of metaphysical ideas or ideas “worked over by 1000s of thinkers for 1000s of years” is a fucking fool! Robert Anton Wilson[195] is right.

  (1981)

  2-3-74: I was bewitched. The purpose: to re-create Jim [Pike] so he could continue speaking (through my writings & not just the Archer book).[196]

  So there is a book within a book. This is what is hanging Russ[197] up. I have done years of research in order to do BISHOP ARCHER—to deal with Jim adequately in the form of mental conceptions about God & specific knowledge of the Bible & theology. I did not have this in 3-74; I could not write the novel until now.

  But there is another intellect in the book, & that is Angel Archer.

  Angel is my soul, & Tim/Jim is Christ. Their 2 minds in BISHOP ARCHER represent the syzygy between me & Christ. Angel Archer is how Christ, who is me, perceives me as she (Angel Archer), the female part of the divine syzygy between me & Christ.

  This is 2-3-74.

  (1981)

  I started to reread VALIS but this time with conscious knowledge of the Aquarian symbols, & it hits you at once in the opening of Ch. 2: God & clay pot linked. Later, pot will become a pitcher containing a liquid, this linked to xtian immortality & reincarnation, finally to Gnosticism; then to the great scene in the film in which the woman is—