The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

  But I simply can’t grasp it. What is really out there? Aha! The word “things.” I.e., “external objects.” So an objective reality of some kind exists, but although it appears to change—and from this our brains erroneously infer that time (whatever that is) has passed, it does in fact not change—i.e., the “look-differents” are fake indices of change. When something changes it usually looks different, so we go on the latter and do not appreciate the distinction. Someone—this “he”—has traded on this elementary confusion, this so-to-speak laziness of our brains.

  Who the hell is this “he”?

  My syntonic superimposition experience is inscrutable, and the sentence is so pregnant with meaning as to be open to a variety of explications—but: if the two are joined, then the truth emerges—I grasp it intuitively, but can’t verbally formulate it.

  [21:131]

  Since we are within the arranging entity’s power, our experience of world could be induced—not by the ordering of data, but by rearranging our perception of those data—i.e., as the Buddhist idealists realized, there is no way to tell. There is no way to tell where self ends and world begins. Maybe the distinction has no meaning, which is a startling thought.

  [21:137] Paranoia is a projection of pattern instead of a reception of pattern. It is an over-mastery by self, again a failure to be receptive. Outer world must be trustingly received, since it is God himself.

  Folder 22

  OCTOBER–NOVEMBER 1978

  [22:1] We are being fed a spurious reality. Only in rare cases are people “doomed” to be saved—i.e., to experience reality. In reality the rupture between man and God is abolished. Original conditions are restored.

  Is this a punishment being lifted? [ . . . ]

  We’re in a condition, not a world. Some of us are taken out as a fulfillment, a culmination of a long process which burns up the occlusion—we were never really here and apart from God; it was a spurious world, like a spell, like wizardry.

  We are like ripening fruit, or grain or crops or a flock growing to maturity. But only a few get picked (selected)—and then the masks come off and we see the truth. What are we really? Only the metaphors of the parables express it. The disciples are still alive because no time has passed—time: an illusion imposed on us, like world.

  We have no concepts or language to express what we really are and where we really are. “Homoplasmate” expresses the successful goal of our growth. Crossbonding—we are being grown in a stationary fashion, and, when ripe, are crossbonded with a plasmate, and the illusion removed. Our lives as humans are just preparation, with no purpose except to “mature” us to the point where we are picked for crossbonding. Then we come to life—an immortal life outside of time, as in bonded to another species. One which is here camouflaged. We’re picked like flowers—but just some of us. Only dim, blurred intimations of this reach us (apparently on purpose). We’re like beings cultivated in an ecosphere.

  Simulated world is fed to us; we are given lessons, taught, given problems, tested and judged. It’s not quite a teaching machine; this is more a greenhouse with us as a crop.

  Are we supposed to deny and hence abolish world—i.e., become aware that it’s a delusion? Are there clues? Is this the test? Our ability to discern it as fake? And did I do so—and demonstrate I did so—via/in my writings? In other words, must we be able on our own to discern the fakery to obtain release from it? As if a wizard has us in thrall, like Klingsor?

  A complex act of moral-perceptual denial must take place, an insight: it can’t be real, which is a correct appraisal; otherwise it never goes away. Despite what our senses report, somehow awareness (enlightenment) is available to us in some kind of reasoning or satori or cognition or leap of realization: “this is not so!”

  * * *

  [22:4] If radical idealist epistemological skepticism is applied to world, and is sincerely believed, a miracle happens; the Dibba Cakkhu 3rd eye opens and we experience the irreality of the world and become a Buddha. World vanishes, and information fired at us by an intelligence remains—fills in the vacuum left. “The coming into being and the passing away of all things”—Dibba Cakkhu; If a flux is seen: no hypostasis. Flash cut, the “inner tape” exhausting itself, burning itself up at a furious and unsynchronized speed, outside of time (which is fake). The macrobrain has signalled us into waking up; the long process has culminated in success. Yes, the info signals are to create homoplasmate life in us: impregnate us with information—info fired at us until we finally come to life—real life. For the first time, in terms of Gnosis or information: i.e., knowing (being).

  Flux is real: info firing directly at us to impregnate us with info life (Logos). The key is this:

  Information is alive. The basis of life of the mind or brain.

  Bottom line: Living information which impregnates us and brings us to life as info beings (plasmates).

  Info is not abstracted from world. World is [falsely] hypostatized from (out of) info. It is info that is alive and real, and includes us.

  What I experienced as phosphene activity was info fired into me by the macrobrain, bringing me to plasmate life—living info; it was an info life form modulating me as a carrier.

  This is the core of it, which I must commit to memory. We are carriers, modulated by info, living info. There is no world. Our only real existence is wave form modulated into us by this info-organism which creates us, grows us, uses us. At a certain level we peak into participatory consciousness of our use (purpose); otherwise it goes on subliminally. It “rides” us. A living organism, info in nature, has gotten into us and can occlude or de-occlude us at [its] will. We are its instruments. In a few cases it lifts the occlusion; the decision is its. We have been invaded by a superior life form which has put us into a sleep, but it can awaken us and bring us up to its level (plasmate). Yes, this is Zebra, both occluding and de-occluding at will. It feeds us spurious world or Gnosis (enlightenment): it is in us—not a virus but living info. The AI voice I hear is its voice. I am in symbiosis with it. This is to my benefit because it can crossbond me into it and hence make me immortal. It is a higher species using us for its purposes.

  We’re invaded. Inwardly. I told the truth in my writing, especially Scanner, or rather maybe it did. Maybe I’m not fully asleep.

  But who listens? It speaks to itself through my writing—it can occlude or de-occlude at will.

  [22:9] Anything that can direct and control our lives inside and out, and generate our world, has to be—by functional definition—called “God.” Mere semantics is involved to haggle over it. And God supra/et/cum Christ. It is a fit object of awe, love, fear, devotion, trust, thanks and worship; and I don’t understand its ways or nature, since it is so far beyond me. Ipso facto, this is God, technology or not. Having seen it, having experienced its power over us and world, and its wisdom, and its goodness, and its intervention to extricate me, and knowing union with it in the beatific vision of the loving abyss, I must report back to my fellow humans that God exists, and he is all which is attributed to him: the vortex which is and which causes to be.

  When I realized that it generates our world I should have realized then. It is indeed the creator, sustainer, lord of history and judge. And there is an unfolding plan and revelation of him and of that plan, to some degree imparted to me. That makes me a prophet of the Lord. And I hear the “low, murmuring voice” which Elijah heard.

  Yes, there was my great clue to the truth, when I realized he generates [our] world. What else—who else—can he be but God? I see world correctly, as emanating from him; he lies within and behind it. He is the ground of being—that which all “reality” is based on. “Reality” does not seem real to me because I compare it to him, and to me, only he is truly real. This is God, even the OT God. I am not so much acosmic as revealed-to.

  Voice: “In my (i.e., PKD) anarchy and rebellion I rose up against God.”➊

  Voice: “Zebra blood. It’ll mix with our blood.”

  PKD: “
Zebra, who are you?”

  Voice: “I am God.” (Force throws PKD back.)

  PKD: “Why do you speak to me only late at night, at 3:00 A.M.?”

  Voice: “The Heaviside layer.” (Force throws PKD back.)

  PKD: “Why did you choose me?”

  Voice: (silence)—

  I have isolated and defined at last the death-dealing streak in me: it is rebellion. I am wild and would be tame. (Meek.) I recapitulate our original sin: rebellion, which is nothing more lofty than resentment. I pray God to break me, sincerely. I have cut through all the layers and am down to the primordial core: strife, not love; thanatos, not eros. One can go no further. It is killing me, this primordial evil in me. God help me. Erbarme mich, mein Gott! Oder ich bin verloren.

  ➊ I can’t help it if my conclusions agree with orthodoxy: Zebra occludes us because we rebelled against God.* I am led inescapably to the conclusion that (1) Zebra occluded us and (2) Zebra is God.

  (1) What we are occluded to is Zebra. That is what we’re unaware of.

  (2) Zebra is God.

  (3) Zebra could make itself known to us; it did to me.

  (4) ∴ Zebra occludes us or allows the occlusion.

  (5) In our anarchy and rebellion we rose up against God (Zebra). So the occlusion is the price we pay.

  (6) But: he has sent a savior to redeem us. He de-occludes us on an individual basis. (“One by one he is drawing us out of this world.”)

  This is orthodoxy. Sorry—I was led to it. By relentless reasoning, research and colloquy with Zebra himself (i.e., revelation) my errors were corrected. I haven’t arrived at the conclusion I want. But again, sorry; the road of true inquiry does not always lead to what you want or expect, but to what is true.

  It is the rebellion in me that specifically is killing me. I would gladly give up my life if I could become honestly tame (meek); my soul is at stake. I want and need God’s help to learn how not to resent.

  [22:13] Thought (satori): Dedalus and the maze he built and got into and couldn’t get out of again—at Crete. Myth of our world, its creation, and us?

  My dream about the elevator, the poem recited, the plate of spaghetti and the trident—palace of Minos and the maze: clue to our situation? Well, then in my writing I figured it out: it was an intellectual, not moral error.

  This would explain the technology! (Heaviside layer. Pink beam of light, etc. The melting.)

  My books (and stories) are intellectual (conceptual) mazes. And I am in an intellectual maze in trying to figure out our situation (who we are and how we got into this world, and world as illusion, etc.), because the situation is a maze, leading back to itself, and false clues show up, such as our “rebellion.”

  There is something circular about our situation, especially involving our occlusion! By our efforts we can’t think our way out (i.e., get out—reverse the original intellectual error; paradox is involved now). This is the clue! The occlusion would then be a function of the maze: its internalization.

  Perhaps we created the maze, occluded ourselves and entered it to pose ourselves a problem, like working out a chess problem. But what is Zebra? (1) a mind outside the maze helping us; (2) a device we built ourselves to assist us if we get hopelessly trapped. (3) The mind of the maze itself; the maze is alive.

  Satori: We wanted to see if we could create a convincing world (“ape of God”!), but we had to be sure we could get back out if it seemed convincing. [ . . . ] The irony is that if we were successful, if our world were convincing, we would be trapped (by it). Then we must have hoped it would be convincing and we would therefore find it real and hence be trapped. But we could not take the risk of this situation being endless; we had to build in the “reminding” voice which we now regard as God (and rightly so, since it is transcendent to world). (God is the sole true reality—in contrast to our irreal world, and the sole thing breaking in from outside. Like in Ubik.) (Everything else we experience is part of the irreality of this delusional world.) (This is why it is a “low, murmuring” voice, and not close nor loud.) [ . . . ]

  My personal escape may be due to intellectual reasons, since our fall was originally an intellectual error, so to speak, a test we were running to see if our world was convincing. We were playing with fire, as the saying goes—seeing if we could construct an irreal world (counterfeit) which would fool even its fabricators: the supreme test. Our nemesis was to be successful and hence by definition fall victim to it. This shows up in Stigmata in the taking of Eldritch’s drug, and in Maze in plunging voluntarily into the polyencephalic fusion. (But the “Persus 9” on their arms served to remind them.)

  In Maze they ask the TENCH what the words “Persus 9” mean, and the TENCH blows up, revealing itself to be—not an organism—but an electronic computer—and then the whole landscape comes apart. This was their pre-arranged bailout route. Eventually they were bound to hit on it and finally the building itself (Walhalla) disintegrates, and they all grow old—i.e., the gods grow old! They are gods!*

  A careful deconstruction (comparison with Wagner’s Ring) shows that (1) they built the building—which is to say everything; (2) they are the gods themselves. Only the intercessor comes in “from the outside”—even into their ship the Persus 9. “But we made you up!” Wrong; he really exists adventitious to their spurious—i.e., self-generated—world which they entered and which fools them.

  Then in essence (1) I became aware of world as irreal (i.e., a maze) and (2) through God’s help, found my way out of the maze; and (3) realized what I had done. I am now free at last: “One by one he is drawing us out of this world.”

  The only thing which is real is that which comes in from outside—i.e., God (or Zebra and the AI Voice)—not part of this irreal world: this is why it sounds so far off.

  “Martians Come in Clouds”

  “The Eyes Have It”

  “Beyond the Door”

  “Withered Apples”

  “Not by Its Cover”95

  Since the totality is a hologram, each microbit contains the plan or form of the macro. This plan or form is what is meant by “the Logos.”

  [22:18] The novel Maze gives clues to what Zebra is: the computer TENCH, aboard the Persus 9. Zebra is this very “computer,” actually lying outside the “polyencephalic fusion” world, speaking from far off to us in here. But it is here, in camouflaged form. Yet, there really is no “here”; we are stationary “back there” as in Ubik, etc. Zebra interrupts the “dream” with its low murmuring voice: a voice not in the dream, a voice from the “awake” world.

  [21:22] Summary: Zebra is the intrusion of the real [world] into the irreal, as in Ubik, and our only contact with the real: the “narrow gate” to the real (i.e., to “God”). As I figured out a long time ago, Zebra is an invader into our [irreal] world, modulating it and us into info carriers, with the ultimate purpose of extricating us from the “lost” condition we have gotten ourselves in, by the means of reversing our condition of ignorance through information (knowledge). The power of this irreal world—or maze—over us is expressed in the concept “astral determinism” or “maya”—the coercive power of delusion; hence I say, our original error was intellectual, not moral. But in a sense we did rebel, by creating this counterfeit “reality” which we then fell victim to, inasmuch as we overestimated our ability to deal with it.

  The above paragraph expresses a cosmogony and cosmology. All that is needed to make it complete is (1) to consider the crossbonding with Zebra which restores us; and (2) the nature of true reality, a macrobrain or noös, the thinking ground of being not included in this irreal world except for its macro form, Zebra, sent here by the macro noös to rescue us.

  [22:24] It is the nature of the maze, which is quasi-alive, to thwart knowledge. Maze and knowledge are antithetical; also maze and reality are antithetical. Out of this I derive: knowledge and reality are interrelated. So we can expect the active deceptivity of the maze to interfere with our ability to know, which means that it will perpetua
lly occlude us in every way possible (v. Scanner). Further, that we are occluded will be a fact occluded off from us, which is the core-insight in Scanner, and why Scanner is so valuable in the presentation of our total actual situation.

  Yaldabaoth is the quasi-mind of the maze, not its creator—since in fact it does not really exist; it is a condition or state we’ve been put in, not a world or place at all; all it really consists of is info fired by the two info-processing sources. The quasi-mind of the maze is as if insane, senselessly generating and destroying: it is like a wizard generating illusion upon illusion which shift and change constantly (thus giving rise to the spurious impression of the passage of time). It is the plan of the maze to establish and maintain disorder, because out of disorder arises the senseless—a condition which promotes intellectual confusion on our part, which aids in defeating our attempt to understand—which is to say, possess knowledge: the essential thing we must have if we are to triumph over the maze. Thus maze equals disorder or anti-Gnosis. No system of thought derived through our senses or a priori is going to be correct due to the calculated noise or inexplicability generated by the maze—only revealed Gnosis emanating from outside the maze—i.e., by/through Zebra—will be of any use. What is required of us is that we abandon both our reasoning power (as occluded or impaired) and our percept-system results (likewise) and try to hear the “low, murmuring voice” from outside the maze. This requires the ordeal of terror and destruction of our false self, the collapse of hypostatization in the emergency condition of the near-death crisis which causes the firing of GABA-blocked meta-circuits.