Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick

by Lawrence Sutin

  In 1979 the Al voice had told Phil: "The time you've waited for has come. The work is complete; the final world is here. He has been transplanted and is alive." The Al voice added that the savior would be found on an island. On the night of September 17, 1981, Phil was just about to fall asleep when he was startled awake by a hypnagogic vision of this savior, named Tagore, who was living in Ceylon. In a September 19 letter to Galen he avowed that "I got more than information, more than words by the Al voice; I actually saw Tagore, although imperfectly. The vision will remain with me forever." In the Exegesis, Phil termed it a teaching (kerygma) that he must communicate. And so on September 23 he mailed a letter to Niekas fanzine editor Edmund Myskys (who published it) and some eighty-five others-friends and distant contactsdescribing Tagore and his teachings. According to Phil, Tagore was dark-skinned, Hindu or Buddhist, and worked in the countryside with a veterinary group. "Although Tagore is the second incarnation of Christ he is taken to be Lord Krishna by the local population." Religious labels hardly matter-at stake is the survival of the earth and of the spirit of man:

  Tagore is burned and crippled; he cannot walk but must be carried. As near as [Horselover] Fat could make out, Tagore is dying, but he is dying voluntarily: Tagore has taken upon himself mankind's sins against the ecosphere. Most of all it is the dumping of toxic wastes into the oceans of the world that shows up on Tagore's body as serious burns. Tagore's kerygma, which is the Third Dispensation (following the Mosaic and Christian) is: the ecosphere is holy and must be preserved, protected, venerated and cherished-as a unity[...]

  Tagore teaches that when the ecosphere is burned, God himself is burned, ~...j Thus a macro-crucifixion is taking place now, in and as our world, but we do not see it; Tagore, the new incarnation in human form of the Logos, tells us this in order to appeal to us to stop. If we continue we will lose God's Wisdom and, finally, we will lose our own physical lives.

  The letter notes the similarity between Tagore's teachings on the ecosphere as Cosmic Christ and those of Teilhard de Chardin in The Phenomenon of Man. But for Chardin the sacred reveals itself in evolution; Tagore comes by way of a divine invasion of our world.

  In this public letter (and not in his earlier letter to Galen) Phil attributed the vision to Horselover Fat: "He got me to write this letter as a way of telling the world-the readership of Niekas, more preciselyabout it. Poor Fat! His madness is complete, now, for he supposes that in his vision he actually saw the new savior." Phil never denied to friends or interviewers that he had seen Tagore. But there was a comfort in the irony of alter ego Fat's voice. In the February 1981 debate with Le Guin, that irony had served to fend off the charge of madness. In a 1981 Exegesis entry he acknowledged: "All these 7 years I've feared I was nuts (hence H. Fat is so described)."

  How did Phil regard the Tagore vision? Village Voice critic Greg Sandow visited Phil in early October and recalls their talk over drinks at a neighborhood bar: "He said that he had been receiving several communications from God and that they confused and troubled him. He spoke very matter-of-factly and directly, not trying at all to awe me. Phil identified with Tagore-what was happening to the savior was happening to himself by way of the injured leg. He was preoccupied with death, but it also seemed to him to be natural, in the sense that the savior himself dies when the world is in bad shape." In the Exegesis, Phil posed the struggle: "I must ask what God wants of me. To promulgate Tagore's kerygma? Or to sacrifice myself? As of today I see only the latter as lying within my power; I do not have the strength left for the former, so he cannot want the former. I must emulate Tagore."

  The Tagore vision became one more piece of the puzzle that would never fit together. It didn't stop Phil in his tracks any more than 11-17-80 had. And a concentration on the new kerygma didn't mean putting on self-righteous airs or forgetting to have fun. One week after Phil sent off the Tagore letter, he dashed off a scathing self-parody (in the form of a review of The Divine Invasion) for a fanzine named Venom. The review concludes:

  It is glib enough, but apparently Dick is trying to work off the bad karma he allegedly acquired during his year or years with street-people, criminals, violent agitators and just by and large the scum of Northern California (this all took place, apparently, after the collapse of one of his many marriages). This reviewer suggests that a better way to make amends would be to take some much-deserved R & R: stop writing, Phil, watch TV, maybe smoke a jointone more bite of the dog won't kill you-and generally take it easy until both the Bad Old Days and the reaction to the Bad Old Days subside in your fevered mind.

  Phil still enjoyed weaving wild late-night tales of Gnostic mysteries and KGB counterplots with Jeter, Blaylock, and Powers. All three would receive urgent phone calls from Phil apropos of anything. Recalls Blaylock:

  One time he'd gotten a check for around $20,000 as a partial payment for Blade Runner. So he calls and says, "Jeez, it's eleven at night and I've got $20,000, what can I do with it?" I said, "What do you want most?" and he said, "I'd kill for a ham sandwich." I told him, "That's asking a lot in Orange County at eleven at night." He said, "What about a girl?"

  Back in 1978, a girl-Therese-who had offered her body had disgusted Phil to the core. Phil's joke touched on this pain and betrayed his loneliness. Hadn't he always known that even God wasn't enough without the love of a good woman? But it had been a four-year dry spell.

  But then his luck changed, or so it seemed.

  In October he met "Susan," the wife of an acquaintance. She was in her late twenties, intelligent and striking. Her marriage was shaky, her husband living out of state. Phil was drawn to her; Susan returned his feelings. Time to fall in love: "I remember that night still, how I felt: the world came alive for me, as if I had been reborn. I had come out of my shell, into which I had withdrawn back in 1977 when Joan and 1 split up." They had a brief, passionate affair. But early on Susan confided that she would soon move to the northern Bay Area. This news cast a blight upon Phil's hopes. He saw a classic double bind: love me/I'm leaving. Her married status gnawed at him: Adultery was not a "right act" by Tagore's standards. And Phil would not follow her north, as he had Joan four years before. In a November letter to Susan he drove the point home. Career, friends, family, and stable home came before passion:

  Anything that jeopardizes these as a package is on a collision course with my life, and that is the name of that tune. My mode of being (Dasein) is accumulative; I add on-this after decades of disorder and intoxication and smashing and leaving and just plain wandering the face of the Earth. For nine years I have systematically built up steadily, and I project all that years into the future. I intend to keep on building.

  Brave and sensible as this sounds, calling off the relationship proved tremendously painful for Phil. A lengthy typed self-analysis from this November details the struggle. One night Phil experienced "oceanic dread" and asked Tessa to come over; she comforted him through the night, and he felt the bonds that still held them together. At the same time, Phil was appalled that both Susan and Tessa were mother figures to him: "It is very bitter, painful and terrible to be forever searching for the good mother (the tender, kind, loving mother) you never had, think that at last you have found her-and then discover that you are right back where you started: involved with the cruel, hateful, suspicious, judgmental mother, the bad mother, all over again."

  Phil next entered into a brief platonic romance with a fellow condo owner. There were moments of bliss in which, as he wrote, "because of you I re-entered reality, from which I fled years ago." But she had a younger lover, and Phil's old yearning for love at all costs was changing: "I asked myself, Am I in love [ ... ]? No I am not. Nor am I in love with [Susan] any more. With Tessa? Perhaps. It's the work, the writing."

  Nonetheless, relations with Tessa were warming. Their joint care of Christopher provided the sense of family that Phil craved. They discussed the possibility of remarrying. Phil's approach to the question was typical of his handling of difficult emotional issues-he
played out different sides at different times. To his friends he posed it as Tessa's desire, with which he would not comply. With Tessa he talked about getting a house together.

  In the midst of all this high drama, Phil did enjoy one stable and comfortable friendship with a woman. Mary Wilson had been a trusted confidante since 1972; now, in the last six months of his life, they were in contact nearly every day. Mary, an actress, could handle the Hollywood glitter and hype, and Phil did have occasion to deal with Hollywood now and then. Blade Runner had finished shooting in September 1981, and there were strong rumors that the Disney Studios would exercise its option on Total Recall, a screenplay based on Phil's 1966 story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale." (Since Phil's death, this film project has become a reality-see the discussion of The Preserving Machine in Chronological Survey.) There were even occasional Hollywood parties, such as the one thrown for prospective backers of Claw (a screenplay based on the 1953 novella Second Variety).

  But the big event was the November invitation from the Blade Runner people to come see a reel of special effects devised for the film. Back in June, Phil had through sheer chance seen a short clip from Blade Runner on the local news and been pleased with the techno-noir beauty of the film. Now he was to receive a private showing. Mary told him to request a limousine and driver-and the studio complied! Phil posed with Ridley Scott for publicity stills in which Phil, not the big-time director, is wearing a tie.

  Phil and Mary would conduct marathon late-night talks at his condominium. Phil's thorough analyses of all possibilities-be the subject Hollywood, God, art, or women-accounted for most of the conversation. He fueled himself with strong Blue Sumatra coffee and frequent snorts of Dean Swift snuff. With Mary, Phil planned to make a triumphant return to France. The organizers of the Metz festival had invited him to come again as guest of honor, all expenses paid, in 1982. On the way they would stop in New York, and Phil would finally visit the city that published him. After Paris and Metz, perhaps they would take in Germany. Mary recalls that they began to discuss their relationship as a "partnership" and that Phil wanted to draw up formal papers to that effect. If he died-and he seemed to sense that he had little time left-a partnership would give her a fair share of the estate. But the idea of papers troubled Mary. "I didn't want to do it-it was like by signing that I'd want his money, not him." To other friends, Phil denied that he ever intended a formal partnership.

  In late December daughter Isa called long-distance. Now fifteen years old, she was very nervous about being called on by the teachers at school, and Phil comforted her. Immediately after the call he wrote her a long letter that he asked her to save-she would understand it better as she grew older. In it he spoke of the human soul that is not at home in this world. The answer to the soul's plight lies in God's grace. God intervenes when our burden becomes too great, but only if we call out to God-"this is why not all humans are saved, because not all humans see, ever, in their entire lives, that they live by and through God, and God alone; [...]"

  In January 1982, according to Tessa, Phil proposed and she accepted. She writes: "Phil had convinced me, this time, that I did not have to be afraid of finding his dead body some day when I came home from the supermarket. That was always my greatest fear, that Phil would successfully attempt suicide, and that I would find the body, or maybe our baby would find it. Phil convinced me that he wanted to live, would go on living. He was wrong." To other friends, Phil denied that he had ever proposed.

  One night in late January, Phil was listening to a KNX FM talk show. The guest was Benjamin Creme, a British artist and mystic who proclaimed the world advent of a godlike teacher-at once the second coming of Christ and the arrival of the future Buddha, Maitreya. This teacher lived somewhere in Europe and was an important spokesman in his community, but he had kept his spiritual identity a secret. He would manifest himself to the world in late spring, and a new spiritual Age of Aquarius would be ushered in.

  Creme's predictions were not so very far removed from Phil's Tagore vision. Phil was thrilled by the show and sent copies of Valis and the Tagore letter to Creme's Tara Center headquarters in Hollywood. He then followed up with the purchase of two Tara Center books, which Phil studied and thought excellent, and a $150 donation. In a February 12 letter to Childworld magazine Phil avowed the Creme teachings as truth: "The central doctrine of his new dispensation is that we of the industrial nations must take primary responsibility for feeding and caring for the poorer people, of the Third World per se; we must share the wealth, energy and resources of the world with all mankind. Our own lifestyles must become more simple; we must not only cease to hoard the resources of the world, we must also cease to waste them." To interviewer Gregg Rickman, he spoke at length concerning his faith in the coming of Maitreya; this interview appears in Philip K. Dick: The Last Testament.

  Rickman writes that, when the interview was completed and the tape recorder shut off, Phil confessed to some doubts as to Creme's prediction of a new spiritual age. When he traveled to Europe he planned to investigate the matter further by checking up in Belgium and the Netherlands. Mary recalls these plans: "Phil said that even if you aren't sure it's true, it doesn't hurt to be included-he would rather be one of the bosses deciding who would pick beans than be one of the bean pickers. I think it was the scenario of his next book-I really do." The Exegesis confirms that Phil took Creme to task over the true nature of the divine invasion. And one 1982 entry suggests why Phil waited until the tape recorder was off to express doubt-such doubt might undermine his goal of exercising an influence on public opinion:

  I've realized: I'm into power. In terms of my writing & in terms of what I do with the money I earn from my writing. The key term is: effective.

  I am interested in only one thing: instead of society molding me, I mold it: (1) in my writing; (2) in what I do with the money; (3) in interviews; (4) in the movie [...j Vast thematic doctrines are emerging [...] This is what the whole opus adds up to: anticipation of the coming kingship of God. In other words, the kerygma.

  To Gwen Lee, in an interview conducted in Phil's final week of consciousness, Phil blended the burdens of prophecy and the plot of Owl and confessed to great weariness:

  I wanted to write about a guy who pushes his brain to its limit, is aware he has reached his limit, but voluntarily decides to go on and pay the consequences. I realized that this is simply a restatement of the whole prophecy thing. It could be the same with money, acquisition of property. It's really the striving-the person becomes aware that whatever he is striving for becomes the cost.

  The cost is riding higher and closing the gap all the time. Eventually the cost line goes higher. This is something I didn't realize about myself. Although I think my writing is getting better all the time my physical stamina is nothing like it used to be. [... ] I can still write well but the costs-I can see the graph in my mind where the cost line is going to meet and then pass the use line. It's inevitable.

  On the night of February 17, Phil called up therapist Barry Spatz. He was worried because during his interview with Rickman that evening he had frequently contradicted himself on and off tape, and not only with respect to Creme. He also was experiencing failing eyesight. Was this a psychological symptom-the avoidance of some truth he didn't want to see? Spatz advised Phil that these sounded like serious physical symptoms and that he should go to a hospital immediately. Phil promised to do so, but he didn't.

  The next day a neighbor saw Phil pick up his newspaper. He had an appointment scheduled with Spatz, and he missed it. Mary tried to reach him by phone and couldn't. It was his neighbors Juan and Su Perez who found Phil unconscious on the floor of his apartment and called for the ambulance. In the hospital Phil was diagnosed as having had a stroke, but one from which he could, over time, recover. He could not speak, but he could smile and his eyes found the faces of the friends and loved ones who came to visit. But further strokes followed, accompanied by heart failure.

  Phil died in the hospital
on March 2, 1982. Age fifty-three.

  The gravesite, chosen by Phil's father, Edgar, is in Fort Morgan, Colorado, a town Phil passed through as a baby boy moving with his family to California.

  Buried beside him is sister Jane.

  CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY AND GUIDE

  It is one of the cardinal errors of literary criticism to believe that the author's own views can be inferred from his writing; Freud, for instance, makes this really ugly error again and again. A successful writer can adopt any viewpoint which his characters must needs possess in order to function; this is the measure of his craft, the ability to free from his work his own prejudices.

  PHIL in Double:Bill, SF Writers' Symposium (1969)

  People have told me that everything about me, every facet of my life, psyche, experiences, dreams and fears, are laid out explicitly in my writing, that from the corpus of my work I can be absolutely and precisely inferred. This is true.

  PHIL, "Introduction" to The Golden Man (1980)

  PHIL Dick was far too prolific to allow for discussion of all of his works in the course of a biographical narrative.

  This Chronological Survey offers a guide to the Phildickian world as a whole for those interested in exploring it further. The books are discussed in the order they were written. To ensure pointless arguments, I've rated each of the works that survive intact on a scale of 1 to 10. That scale is internally based: 10 equals the best work Phil produced, which is, in my view, very good indeed. May readers confronted by over fifty titles to choose from derive benefit thereby. Where the works have been previously discussed in the main narrative, I've provided chapter references.

  Underwood/Miller provided a great service by publishing, in 1986, an elegant five-volume Collected Stories (which includes previously unpublished tales). Nonetheless, I've approached the stories in this survey by way of the separate collections-A Handful of Darkness (1955), The Variable Man (1957), The Preserving Machine (1969), The Book of Philip K. Dick (1972), The Best of Philip K. Dick (1977), The Golden Man (1980), and I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1985)-because they contain the best of the stories. (Phil helped with the selection process for Best of and Golden Man. )