Pinky: Dick’s cat, who died of cancer in 1974.
pistis (Greek): An ardent faith or fidelity; in Christianity, faith in Christ.
plasmate: A Dickian neologism roughly equivalent to “living knowledge” and another cognate for VALIS. Dick often felt that he had bonded with the plasmate in 2-3-74 and that, as a result, he had a second self dwelling within his psyche, making him a homoplasmate. Dick often regarded the plasmate as the living transmission of the Gnostic goddess Sophia.
pleroma (Greek): Literally, “fullness”; in Gnostic texts the term refers to the distant ideal realm inhabited by the divine powers, or aeons, who transcend creation.
Plotinus (c. 205–270 C.E.): Ancient Roman philosopher in the tradition of Plato whose notion of the One gave Dick a way to integrate some of the phenomena he perceived through the lens of VALIS. Plotinus’s One is both the undivided source of all entities and the goal of contemplative thought; the mystic philosopher’s search for the One is famously described as “the flight of the alone to the alone.”
pronoia: In theology, and in the writings of Philo of Alexandria in particular, pronoia refers to God’s governance of creation. It is roughly analogous to the concept of divine providence. More recently, the term has assumed a psychological valence as an inverse to paranoia, so that it denotes the belief that the universe is a conspiracy on one’s behalf.
psyche (Greek): Originally “breath,” “life,” subsequently “soul” or “self.” Aristotle’s treatise on the psyche in On the Soul deals with the various types of forces that characterize living things. The goddess Psyche was represented as a butterfly in ancient Greece, perhaps to symbolize the capacity of life and the self for transformation.
Pythagoras (c. 570–490 B.C.E.): Ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician, perhaps the first to call himself a philosopher or “lover of wisdom.” Generally acknowledged as the source of the Pythagorean theorem that lies at the basis of trigonometry, Pythagoras elevated mathematics to a metaphysical system founded in part on the ratios between musical pitches. Pythagoras supposedly deduced these relations when he wondered at the different tones produced by a group of blacksmiths working at an anvil; analysis revealed that the different tones were directly proportionate to the differing weights of the hammers.
Qumran Scrolls: Also known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. A library of Jewish documents dating from the third century B.C.E. to C.E. 68, discovered in a series of caves at Qumran near the Dead Sea. The inhabitants of the Qumran community may have been Essenes.
ruah (Hebrew): Breath, spirit.
Runciter, Glen: Character in Dick’s Ubik (1968). The cigar-smoking Runciter heads an anti-pre-cog company with the help of his dead wife Ella, who dwells in cryonic suspension. Significantly for the Exegesis, Runciter communicates with characters stuck in an alternate world through advertisements, matchbook covers, and bathroom graffiti.
Salvador Salvandus, or Salvator Salvandus: The “saved savior,” a trope of Gnostic soteriology. The hero in the “Hymn of the Soul” in the Acts of Thomas is an example of such a savior who himself is saved.
Sankara (c. 788–820 C.E.): One of the most important expositors of Advaita Vedanta or idealist “nondualism” in medieval India; see Atman.
satori (Japanese): Enlightenment; in Zen Buddhism, a deep intuitive insight into the nature of reality.
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860): Pessimistic German philosopher whose account of the blind striving of life, or “will,” casts doubts on the power of reason to organize human society. Schopenhauer called for humans to look beyond appearances or representations, which have a similar relation to reality as a dream. A pioneer in the Western philosophical encounter with Eastern thought, Schopenhauer was deeply influenced by the Upanishads, whose translation had “been the solace of my life, and will be the solace of my death.”
shekhina (Hebrew): To settle, dwell, or inhabit. In the Bible, the term refers to the presence of God in the Tabernacle and later the Temple (see, for example, Exodus 40:35); in Kabbala, this divine presence is considered female and is associated with the material world.
sibyl: Female oracles or prophetesses of the ancient Greeks. Particularly important to Dick was the famous sibyl at Cumaea, a community near Rome. Though pagan, some sibyls were considered to have prophesied the coming of Christ.
Siddhartha: The birth name for the prince who became the Buddha.
soma (Greek): Body.
Sophia, sometimes Hagia Sophia (Greek): Wisdom, considered alternately as an abstract philosophical concept or a sacred being. The aeon Sophia plays a vital role in many Gnostic systems, where her actions bring about both the fall into creation and the salvation of the light; she also makes an appearance in the biblical book of Proverbs.
Spinoza, Baruch (1632–1677): A lens maker, Jewish heretic, and philo sophical monist of vast influence on the history of philosophy. Spinoza’s vision of an “immanent” God identified with nature suggested that the divine permeates material reality. This theory of creative immanence was grist for Dick’s meditation upon 2-3-74. Spinoza remains an influential thinker for contemporary philosophy, especially in the works of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.
Stigmata: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) tells the story of wealthy industrialist Palmer Eldritch, who returns from the Proxima system with the drug Chew-Z; when ingested, it transports the user into another reality where Eldritch, whose “three stigmata” include a slot-eyed metal mask, is God. The novel can be read as an inverted fantasy of the Mass, in which the sacrament is taken to ensure salvation and ever-lasting life, not for the parishioner, but for the deity.
surd: From the Latin root “speechless”; in mathematics, a surd refers to an unresolvable or “radical” square root (such as the Ô2) that cannot be expressed with rational numbers. Within the religious discourse of theodicy, a surd refers to a natural evil, like tsunamis or cancer, rather than a moral evil. Dick defines it here as “something irrational that can’t be explained after everything that is rational has been.”
Synoptic Gospels, or Synoptics: Name for the three canonical gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—that contain roughly the same narrative of Jesus’s life and share a good deal of material and language. Apocryphal gospels and the canonical Gospel of John have little to no such overlap.
syzygy: The name given in some Gnostic systems, particularly those associated with Valentinus, for the male-female pairs of entities, or aeons, who emanate from the One or the supreme being. The term is also used by Carl Jung to describe the pairing of the male animus and female anima in the unconscious.
Tagomi, Nobusuke: The hero of The Man in the High Castle (1962). Tagomi is a midlevel Japanese bureaucrat who, at the end of the novel, “sees through” to something resembling our reality while examining a piece of jewelry in a San Francisco park. See TMITHC.
Tagore: On the night of September 17, 1981, Dick experienced a hypnagogic vision of Tagore, a world savior living in Ceylon. On September 23, Dick sent a letter to the science fiction fanzine Niekas (and to some eighty-five other friends and distant contacts) describing Tagore as dark-skinned, Hindu or Buddhist, and working in the countryside with a veterinary group. Rabindrath Tagore was a major Indian writer in the twentieth century; the name also distantly echoes Tagomi.
Tat Tvam Asi (Sanskrit): Traditionally translated “That thou art.” An im portant phrase in Vedantic thought, it is a means of emphasizing the identity of Atman and Brahman.
Tears: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974) features Jason Taverner, one of the most famous entertainers in the world, who wakes up in a dystopian world where no one has ever heard of him. The book offers meditations on the various types of human love that, Dick argues, ultimately bind us to our reality.
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1881–1955): Jesuit theologian, philosopher, and scientist notable for his fusion of theology and evolutionary theory. He proposed that humankind is evolving toward Point Omega, a single, unified being that is also
Christ. Teilhard wrote extensively about the noösphere xs, the collective effect of human consciousness on the biosphere and the medium for the planet’s evolution toward Point Omega.
tetragrammaton: See YHWH.
theolepsy: Possession by deity.
theophany: The visual revelation of deity.
Thomas: A separate personality who, according to one of Dick’s lines of speculation, had cross-bonded with the author during the events of 2-3-74 (see homoplasmate). The topic of much speculation in the Exegesis, Thomas is most often identified as an early Christian; other possibilities include James Pike, Paracelsus, a Soviet agent, and an alternate or future version of Dick himself.
Tillich, Paul (1886–1965): German-American Protestant theologian and philosopher. Tillich’s The Courage to Be (1952) was a major and widely read work of postwar existentialist thought. In his concept of the “god beyond god,” Tillich argues that a reinvigorated encounter with the divine requires that the faithful move beyond what Dick calls “prior thought formations” and encounter a God beyond their concepts of God.
Timaeus: One of the Platonic dialogues, the Timaeus describes the cosmos as the work of a divine craftsman, the personification of Intellect or noös, who creates order out of primordial chaos. Dick borrows heavily from the cosmogony of Timaeus, in particular its description of the cosmos as a living animal with a soul and its teleological account of history as the activity of noös shaping ananke, or necessity.
Ti to on (Greek): “What is it?” This primordial question of Being is famously asked by Aristotle at the beginning of his Physics.
TMITHC: The Man in the High Castle (1962), a Hugo Award–winning novel set in an alternate United States where the Axis powers won World War II. The novel’s portrayal of the interactive wisdom of the I Ching looks forward to some of Dick’s later theorizing about VALIS, while the protagonist Tagomi’s epiphany late in the novel anticipates, for Dick, his own experience with the fish sign.
To Scare the Dead: Dick’s first proposed novel about the events of 2-3-74. Dick made notes for the novel in 1974–75. The title was intended to refer to the reawakening of seemingly dead personages (such as the early Christian Thomas) as a result of the same forces that were at work in Dick’s 2-3-74 experiences.
Torah: Strictly speaking, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Pentateuch. In Kabbala and in Dick’s Exegesis, Torah takes on a transcendent role as the plan of creation, roughly analogous to the Logos in Christian theology; some traditional Jewish mystics held that the Torah was a living being.
Tractate: “Tractates Cryptica Scriptura,” a metaphysical treatise, heavily influenced by the Exegesis, that Dick appended to the novel VALIS (1981).
Ubik: Dick’s 1969 novel concerns a team of telepathic corporate spies injured in an explosion, who find themselves in a world that is rapidly decaying and devolving. As the characters succumb, their condition is mitigated by a magical product known as Ubik: an aerosol spray that combats the forces of entropy.
Umwelt (German): The universal environment that surrounds us. One of the three types of world described by the existentialist psychologist Ludwig Binswanger; see Mitwelt and Eigenwelt.
Urgrund (German): Primitive basis or source. Used by both Eckhart and Boehme to describe ultimate reality.
Urwelt (German): Primeval world.
UTI: Ultra Terrestrial Intelligence; a term for higher beings who originate on this planet.
VALIS: Acronym coined by Dick, based on the phrase “Vast Active Living Intelligence System.”
Valisystem A: Dick made notes for a novel with this title between 1974 and 1976, sometimes in conjunction with notes on To Scare the Dead. The book was written in 1976 and posthumously published in 1985 as Radio Free Albemuth.
Virgil (70–19 B.C.E.): Roman author. The sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid, as well as his fourth Eclogue, features the Cumaean Sibyl.
VR: VALIS Regained, working title for The Divine Invasion (1981).
Warrick, Patricia, or Pat: Patricia Warrick, a science fiction critic who corresponded with Dick and wrote about him extensively, both before his death, in The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction (1980), and after, in Mind in Motion: The Fiction of Philip K. Dick (1987).
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861–1947): English mathematician and philosopher. In their Principia Mathematica, Whitehead and Bertrand Russell attempted to provide a robust formal structure for mathematics, a project whose unresolvable contradictions ultimately helped spawn the computer. Later Whitehead developed process philosophy, a school of thought that characterizes reality as a continuum of overlapping events rather than a collection of objects. Charles Hartshorne developed Whitehead’s thoughts on the theological implications of this philosophy into process theology.
Xenophanes (c. 570–475 B.C.E.): Greek philosopher and poet, and a critic of the religious anthropomorphism of his contemporaries. In fragments referenced frequently in the Exegesis, Xenophanes describes a God who is unitary, changeless, and eternal and “shakes all things by the thought of his mind.”
Xerox letter, or Xerox missive: A mysterious letter received by Dick in March 1974. The envelope contained a photocopied book review from a left-wing newspaper with certain words underlined in red and blue; it had a return address, but no name. Dick insisted that his wife Tessa read it in his stead, claiming vague foreknowledge about it and believing that if he saw its contents he would die. In the Exegesis he suggests that this foreknowledge saved his life.
YHWH: In the Hebrew Bible, the true name of God; also referred to as the tetragrammaton.
Zagreus (Greek): An alternate name of the Greek god Dionysus that means “torn to pieces.” The name reflects the Orphic myth that Dionysus was torn apart by the Titans as a child, only to return to life through the agency of his father Zeus, who restored his son to life by eating the heart of his sundered corpse.
About the Editors and Annotators
Simon Critchley is Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. He is the author of many books, including The Faith of the Faithless, to be published in 2012. He is series moderator for “The Stone,” an online philosophy column with the New York Times.
Erik Davis is the author of four books on alternative religion and popular culture, including Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information and Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica. He is pursuing a PhD in religious studies at Rice University and has been writing and lecturing on Philip K. Dick for over twenty years.
Richard Doyle is Professor of English and Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University and the author of a trilogy of books on information and the life sciences. The latest, Darwin’s Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noösphere, was published by the University of Washington Press in 2011.
Steve Erickson is the author of nine novels—including These Dreams of You, to be published in early 2012—as well as editor of the literary journal Black Clock. In November 1990, he wrote the cover story on Philip K. Dick, “California Time-Slip,” for the L.A. Weekly.
David Gill teaches composition and literature at San Francisco State University and runs the popular Philip K. Dick–centric blog, Total Dick-Head (totaldickhead.blogspot.com). He has written about Dick for Article magazine, boingboing, and io9 and lectured about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? at Harvard and the National Association of Humanities Educators.
N. Katherine Hayles is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of Literature at Duke University. Her books include How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics and Writing Machines. Her most recent, How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis, will be published in 2012.
Pamela Jackson holds degrees in rhetoric and library and information studies from the University of California, Berkeley and Los Angeles, respectively. Her 1999 dissertation, “The World Philip K. Dick Made,” initiated a decade’s study
of Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis. She is also a graduate of Berkeley High School, Philip K. Dick’s only alma mater.
Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. A historian of religions who specializes in the analysis and interpretation of comparative mystical literature, he is the author or co-editor of twelve volumes, including his most recent, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal.
Jonathan Lethem is the Roy E. Disney Chair in Creative Writing at Pomona College and the author of eight novels and two collections of stories. His writing on Philip K. Dick appears in his essay collections The Disappointment Artist and The Ecstasy of Influence.
Gabriel Mckee is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and the author of The Gospel According to Science Fiction. A theologian concentrating on the intersection of religion and popular culture, he also works as a librarian and archivist specializing in rare books and counterculture ephemera. His first book was Pink Beams of Light from the God in the Gutter: The Science Fictional Religion of Philip K. Dick.
Names Index
Abendsen, Hawthorne, [>]
Aldiss, Brian, [>]
Alexander the Great, [>]
Allegro, John, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]
Altman, Robert, [>]
Anaxagoras, [>]
Anderson, Maxwell, [>]
Appolonius of Tyana, [>]
Archimedes, [>]
Aristotle, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]
Augustine, [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]
Avicenna, [>]
Bach, J. S., [>], [>]
Beethoven, Ludwig van, [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]
Bergson, Henri, [>], [>], [>], [>]
Berkeley, George, [>], [>], [>], [>