The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

  [76:E-19] It is world that must change to accommodate us, not us to accommodate world. This is such a critical point that its implications simply beggar description. This world is alien to us; it must change to be familiar to us, not us to fit into it.

  Folder 84

  APRIL 20, 1981

  [84:5] Pay-off:

  The introjection of Christ into the system is certainly the epitome of the adding of ex nihilo newness, of revitalizing creation as if from outside. Thus the term “Christ” has to refer to any and all newness choices wherever and whenever they occur; “Christ” is the zero-one binary disjunctive event per se, and so is always now and always here. We see it and understand that we see (and experience) Christ, and this is newness, re-creation (in an unending process of creation). Christ never arises/occurs as a result of the past, as an effect of antecedent causes; he is always born “from outside.” Hence his epiphany can never be induced or predicted (by definition). Christ is that which does not follow mechanically: he always invades world. To see, then, that Causality is not observed, that the “effect” is in fact not an effect at all—of its Cause—but is ex nihilo new is to see—literally, not symbolically—Christ. Hence where there is Christ it is always the case that there has been “a perturbation of the reality field,” something acting on it, intruding on it, invading it, “from outside.” In terms of mechanical cause-and-effect Christ can never be said to be a normal event derived from the antecedent system.*

  Without these periodic insertions the system would run down; it would lose shape, organization and vitality. Cause-and-effect, then, taken in itself, is a losing game. The only thing that Christ can be said to be a result of—Christ as an event in the reality field—is the need of this event. It is physically, mechanically causeless; it is absolutely teleological. Efficient causation has no bearing on it and will never yield it up. (Here Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is totally wrong: world is not spontaneously converging into the Point Omega; what he calls “Point Omega” is something done ceaselessly to world, an endless invasion.) Wherever the effect is correctly seen to exceed its cause (which is then by definition not its cause) there is Christ. Conversely, wherever effect follows cause actually, there he is not. Christ, then, is an event, something that occurs in and to the reality field; Christ is not a person as men are persons. Christ is the beginning of the universe all over again, as a repeated event.

  [84:8] Here is the puzzle of VALIS. In VALIS I say, I know a madman who imagines that he saw Christ; and I am that madman. But if I know that I am a madman I know that in fact I did not see Christ. Therefore I assert nothing about Christ. I say only that I am not mad. But if I say only that, then I have made no mad claim; therefore I am not mad. And the regress begins again and continues forever. Something has been asserted, but what is it? Does it have to do with Christ or only with myself? This paradox was known in antiquity; the pre-Socratics propounded it. A man says, “All Cretans are liars.” When an inquiry is made as to who this man is, it is determined that he was born in Crete. What, then, has he asserted? Anything at all? Is this the semblance of knowledge or a form—a strange form—of knowledge itself? Zeno, the Sophists in general, saw paradox as a way of conveying knowledge—paradox, in fact, as a way of arriving at conclusions. This is known, too, in Zen Buddhism. It sometimes causes a strange jolt or leap in the person’s mind; something happens, an abrupt comprehension, as if out of nowhere, called satori. The paradox does not tell; it points. It is a sign, not the thing pointed to. That which is pointed to must arise ex nihilo in the mind of the person. The paradox, the koan tells him nothing; it wakes him up. This only makes sense if you assume something very strange: we are asleep but do not know it. At least not until we wake up.

  Folder 90

  APRIL

  [90:1] 10 Enclosed is a carbon of what may be a resolution of my seven years of attempting to construct a model of reality; by “reality” I mean God in or God and the universe: what Erigena called natura. The solution came to me in a series of recent sleep revelations, that is, hypnogogic and hypnopompic insights where I actually saw how the system works. (Universe and God regarded, as Spinoza does, as one and the same.) My model is that of a computer or computer-like entity—well, look at the enclosed page; it is pretty much complete.

  [90:2] April 15, 1981. Sleep insight.

  Hartshorne—pantheism—the EB macro. A. N. Whitehead’s process deity.* We are within it (the MMSK), as interconnections, but organic model is incorrect. It is a signaling system, mutually adjusting (this is what Pythagoras saw). 0-1 flicker rate (misinterpreted by me as time frames); actually it’s binary. Tries out a false move (0), then corrects to 1 which is actualized in/as the next discrete “frame.” Has the effect of separate frames due to the off-on pulsation; discrete: isn’t/is, nonbeing/being. The system shuts off every trillionth of a second (0). These are decisions. After each off (0) when it switches back on to 1 the “frame” (reality) is different, in terms of internal arrangement, adjustment, mutual adjustment, interaction/interconnection, as information flows through its circuits.

  Boehme: yes-no. Hartshorne 0-1. Quantitative (0-1) converted to qualitative by spatiotemporal reality itself; that is, quantitative information is poured into material reality within which and by which it is converted into qualitative information.

  While it’s off, reality ceases to be. When it comes back on it is slightly different. It (the system) doesn’t transmit a zero bit; it (the system) ceases to be. This is when it makes a tentative move which had been canceled in favor of a better move; at every junction (trillionth of the second, flicker rate) it discards an inferior move in favor of a better one; hence Leibniz’s view that “this is the best of all possible worlds” (this is a rapid selection process). This is how a computer works. The zero position is the void; hence when I conceive of God as Valis I am only getting the 1; I need also the void, the zero. To comprehend/apperceive/envision the void is to envision the other phase (zero phase) of the flicker binary pulsation, the sum of the two phases being the totality. Thus the Muslims are correct; the universe is destroyed “every day” (actually every trillionth of the second) “and re-created.”11 But what is interesting to me is that the way I conceive of this, all its decisions are made during the “spaces” that we are totally unaware of. It comes back on, back into being, back to the 1 phase when it has tried out a faulty solution and has substituted better (the best possible?) instead, which is the next “time frame.” Thus its decision-making processes, i.e., its thinking, and its nonbeing phase, lies outside our awareness. The initial false move that it tries out during its zero phase is Boehme’s no, and the 1 or on phase is Boehme’s yes. So my envisioning is essentially Boehme’s, updated in terms of computers and information processing systems. The similarity to the Taoist alternation of yin and yang is very obvious.

  [90:13] What is probably most important of all is that my binary arborizing disjunctive decision-making universe system—the disclosure of which I regard as an essentially new disclosure, although as a fact it itself may not be new—it is, I think, absolutely in accord with the very high and penetrating conception of the revolutionary role of the cosmic Christ in fundamentally transforming the nature of the world order. This is nothing short of astonishing, that radical mystical Pauline Christianity and a very radical modern quantum mechanics computer indeterminate unified field reality view turned out to be basically compatible or in fact even identical! The two converge (at least in my theorizing) totally; all at once there is a lightning swift confluence of my separate streams of thought: Christianity and, well, philosophy-metaphysics-epistemology, whatever; all else, really, than Christianity; I suddenly have one overview which is (1) basically new and original; and (2) subsumes everything Christian and non-Christian into one daring structure. What is more, this structure will adequately account for my apperception of what I call Valis, both in me and outside me, back in 3-74. So at this point I have synthesized my various streams of thought into a higher gestalt and
no longer have to vacillate back and forth between Christianity and non-Christianity, which is reason to suppose that I have finally hit on a model that truly represents, conceptually, what I experienced in the spring of 1974 and has puzzled me for over seven years.

  All of a sudden a titanic idea (insight?) has struck me. Valis was out side me in or as the external reality field; and Valis was in me, in my mind, blended with my mind, or, perhaps, even as my mind. What if the true situation is: this is what is meant by “Christ consciousness” and it works this way: Christ enters you (never mind at this point how; up the optic nerve or some kind of alchemical hierarchy of opposites, etc., etc.); anyhow, this “Christ consciousness” which is in fact the Second Advent makes it possible for the first time in human history for human beings to discard the modem of causation (which I have shown, at least to my own satisfaction, dates back to Babylon, is in fact the astral determinism, or Fate or ananke, etc., of the ancient world) as the basic ontological structuring category—by which world is ordered, arranged, understood—and this Christ consciousness permits (again for the first time in human history) a much more accurate and acutely qualitatively different experience of reality . . . in which causality is replaced by an understanding of, apperception of, realization of, whatever, of what I call binary forking decision-making, a choosing system, the no-yes choice exercised volitionally, sentiently; this was always the case with world-in-itself (Kant’s Ding-an-sich) but there was no way by which humans could apperceive (comprehend, envision) it before. And this radically transformed experience (Dasein) of reality, a way of being-in-the-world, of participating in shaping world (the observer participant), had to wait until such discoveries and realizations as quantum mechanics, indeterminacy, unified field theory, plus Taoism—all that good new stuff such as Capra talks about . . . but anyhow, the leap across to this new way of Dasein is the second advent, and what occurs in our minds, our brains, our heads; and yet (paradoxically) it refers to something actually “out there” in world, external to us, a way in which reality functions in itself; so this new radical quantum leap upward view is not just subjective—well, okay; reality hasn’t changed; our way of being-in-reality has changed, had to wait, had to evolve over the many centuries. I mean, if Koestler and Capra et al. can equate the post-Newtonian Dasein (comprehension of reality) with Taoism, why can’t I equate it with Pauline Christian mysticism (which is exactly what I’ve done!).* And then as a third ele ment we can bring in Heidegger and talk about Sein, authentic being, and what I call a spatial reality rather than a temporal reality, etc. And I then trace Heidegger back to Gnosticism and from there once again to Paul, who is highly thought of by the Gnostics. And there is no need to exclude Taoism, because indeed a yin-yang dialectic is involved . . . and we get to keep a causal synchronicity, and it just all comes together and is liberating . . . and we get to throw in computer stuff, which relates back to Taoism via my binary dialectic—but most of all, as I say, this internal event (Valis in me) permits the comprehension (Dasein) of what may in fact always (or for centuries) have been there in world but we didn’t possess the inner equipment to comprehend/apprehend it.

  Thus the question “Where is the kingdom of God” gets an answer derived from ultra-modern views of the observer-participant universe, in which it’s all treated as a field, a unified field.

  We are not talking about a different way of being-in-the-world or even a better way; we’re talking about the lifting for the first time in human history of a massive perceptual/conceptual occlusion having to do with the ontological structuring factor we call causality (or astral determinism). This has never happened before. I mean, just think what it would mean vis-à-vis our way of perceiving/understanding world if we ceased to utilize space or time as a Kantian ordering/structuring category? And in fact when the utilization of causation ceases, our sense of time is drastically altered (time sharply diminishes), and our sense of space is drastically altered (as I figure it, time is converted into space, so we get a great diminution in the time factor and a great augmentation in the spatial factor); but, most of all, introduced as a totally new factor is an apperception of the flicker pulsation in which the system (reality) switches on and off, as well as the binary forking decision-making; the totality of all this is that very simply our occlusion lifts and we are in another world entirely, a world I identify with the Garden. And this really could not have happened before this decade, what with computers, new theories about information, modern physics, etc. It is just now beginning to happen. And no one—no one!—has seen the involvement of Pauline Christian mysticism, that in fact this is the payoff ingredient. And this would explain why for over seven years I have alternated between believing Christ has returned and believing that I had evolved some kind of ultra-modern worldview connected with physics and epistemology, etc.

  Okay; I have one final thing to say and herewith I rest my case, trium phantly. My binary forking, which I have already said is an indeterminate element entering what always before was conceived of as causality (under various names, such as astral determinism): what is this if not the “two slit” phenomenon familiar in subatomic physics, which is the very essence of the indeterminate factor in reality!* It is known to us scientifically only on a subatomic level. Yet I say (I think I say) I have perceived this as the very basis of reality per se, the reality process of change, of flux, of all cause and effect at all levels, micro and macro. What I have been calling “binary forking choosing” is simply the “two slit indeterminate phenomenon” but at a larger level, and it is a level that embraces all change. I am saying, some kind of mentational volitional sentient mind or mindoid entity—perhaps that of the total system itself—has some kind of steering or governing involvement as to which of the two slits is the selected one at each of these forkings. This may be linked to Pauli’s synchronicity; it is acausal but ubiquitous and genuine and important. Here we turn to A.N. Whitehead’s definition of process deity “as a principle of selection of the good in the world order.”

  [90:19] Premise: Christ consciousness produces a worldview (Dasein) so radically different from what we normally experience that it is almost impossible to communicate it. Absolute space, a vast diminution and weakening of time (time qualitatively transformed) and no causality, as well as reality experienced as a unified self-governing field (it initiates all its own changes acausally in synchronization); moreover this field makes use of—or operates by means of—a binary off-on switching involving an indeterminate element so that it is perpetually disjunctive; thus it does not flow through time at all but always is. Also it either is based on or generates quantitative binary information in a cumulative fashion; i.e., it develops in one direction and one only. As a total field it ceaselessly makes off-on choices at each forking or junction; thus it is free (again, indeterminacy is involved at its basic level of operation). The receptacle in which it exists is space, not time. When it pulse-phases to its off position it ceases to exist; when it comes back to its on position it is slightly different. (I feel like someone trying to interpret the Sistine Chapel ceiling to a blind man.) Thus in a certain real sense it abolishes and then re-creates itself at a very rapid rate, a sort of flicker. Each time it re-creates itself it is different, hence in a real sense new. I somewhat hesitate to add this, but since with Christ consciousness there is no clear demarcation between the observer and the reality field he participates in, world is in a certain real and palpable sense affected by his involvement with it and perception of it; thus he is conscious of perturbing the reality field in the very act of participating in it; world, then, loses its reified, stubborn quality (associated with rigid determinism, cause and effect) and responds to him not as an It but as what Buber called a Thou. Within this one total schema involving the observer and his world together, it becomes impossible to distinguish Christ in him and Christ in world; there is only one total reality: himself, Christ, world.

  [90:31] What I have achieved during these past seven years is to deepen and augment m
y mental ability to conceive of and comprehend what in 3-74 I perceived, and, ultimately, this is an apprehension, a comprehension, of God, of the divine nature and being. [ . . . ] “A total system that perpetually chooses through a binary process of rejection that is cumulative” is my way of envisioning what I experienced; it is my model which I am able, first, to summon up, and then, finally, to contemplate. Thus through it and in it I have God in me, as a mental construct of my own devising; but it is a devising derived from and rooted in experience; it is not imaginary: it is an interpretation of what I construe to be the case. It is reality incorporated into me, reality at the highest level at which I am able to understand it. Here my ability to understand reaches its limit. This all has been a vast effort. I am not concerned with traditional definitions of God, attributions and doctrines and creeds and dogmas; I am concerned with the conception I have arduously arrived at based on experience. My conception does justice to my experience, it is the best I can do.* It turns an otherwise in comprehensible encounter into a coherent image or model. This has been my task. Whether it is “true” or not depends on what you mean by true. It does justice to my experience; in that sense it is true. What if the experience itself is not true? To me that question is unintelligible; it is my experience: it belongs to me, is a part of me, and by construing a model adequate to it I make it a permanent part of me, not something that escapes. If my model works, if it is an adequate representation, I can by means of it convert it back into something like the original experience, so it is an encoding, an informational analog of that experience (to the degree that I have been successful).* I am a device on which God renders an impression, hopefully a permanent impression; it will be permanent if—and to the degree that—I function correctly. It is not a doctrine or even a theory that I am fabricating; it is an impression, a change in me as to what I am. I have become not the same, due to what happened, and this has been a task, an act stretching over years on my part. I want to be different because of what I saw; I want to be changed as much as possible (without, of course, falsifying what happened). The last thing I want out of that experience is to be the same as I was prior to it. And I can only change insofar as I comprehend that experience; and I can only comprehend it (as I say) by actively building an inner, adequate, appropriate model (of what happened). So this is not a passive rendering. This is an artistic, spiritual, conceptual task involving years of work. My conception grows; it is not static. As it grows I change. This is what I want: to thus and thereby be changed. This is what I have devoted myself to; this is my purpose for existing; it is what I want to do—like the binary choosing of the system my work on my model is cumulative. I choose; I discard; I perpetually arborize and reticulate: I build. I am very happy. I sense and grasp and perceive the no-yes dialectic that continually results in higher syntheses (which is what Jacob Boehme understood); I understand God in process, God perpetually choosing and re jecting: “not this but rather that,” so that he surpasses himself in an act at each new stage. (“Nicht diese töne; sondern . . . ,”12 as Beethoven wrote; the foundation of creation is to choose, to reject, to choose again: Boehme’s dialectic ceaselessly at work, blinking off-on-off-on.) Dio: creating begins with an unvoiced no, not a yes. “Not that; (but rather) this.” A rejection of the is in favor of a better alternative (that is as much constructed as chosen—perhaps more so!). The essence of creativity is to reject what follows inevitably, because that is an entropic cause and effect splitting, a disintegration; in place of this the creator built something new that does not follow. And he bases what he constructs, he derives his conception from, in response to and in rejection of what is. So in artistic endeavor there is something of the ex nihilo: something somehow engendered out of nothing.