The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

  I define Christ, then, as anyone whose love (compassion) is so great that he rejects his chance at Nirvana (return to God) to return from death—the next World/Upper Realm—to and for his friends. After he dies they receive his returned spirit (“Born again”—“Born in the Spirit”—“Born from above”), whereupon not only are they joined with him but, moreover, the two realms are reunited to form what is called “the Kingdom of God” since the syzygy of him and his friend occupies—occurs in—both realms. The living friend not only finds the dead friend in his mind—he also experiences the next world: the two realms unify like two signals; this is restoration of the cosmos to before the Fall.

  This is what is meant by Christianity, because it confers new life, a new kind of life—and, moreover, life that is a syzygy between the two friends.

  [79:I-64] I have yoked Joyce’s human character (Molly Bloom) to the prose of, e.g., the Encyclopedia of Philosophy: i.e., the finest prose style.

  [79:I-65] Archer is just plain the best novel I have ever written: I am at the height of my power; it evolves through Mary and the Giant to Crap to VALIS to it.

  The fact is, I not only know Angel Archer—Betty Jo, Connie, Kleo, Joan—and something more. My creation born out of 35 years of writing. This book, Archer, the summation back to “Weaver’s Shuttle”—it sums up them all, from my first stories when I lived in the same building that (Monica Reilly) did—to VALIS (never mind Divine Invasion). And I did this deliberately: summed up 35 years of writing. This (David’s offer) was the summation and victory of 35 years, not psychologically but artistically.

  Not: Mary and the Giant to Archer

  But: Mary and the Giant, through VALIS, to Archer— extraordinary.

  [79:I-68] So where did she come from? I inferred her nature from the style. But when you read the book you naturally get the opposite impression, viz: I had her in mind, because I wanted her to be my character I had to use her style of thinking. Yet that is not so. “The style is everything in Literature”; fine: but in this book my style brought a character into being. The origin of Angel Archer is in the style. Where did the style come from? It is a synthesis of a number of sources (my eclectic reading).

  Throughout the book, her compassion factor grows Bishop Archer’s mind (intellect) which she had identified as something related to, like, analogous to her own, is (becomes), because it now is in Bill, the object of her compassion (loving-kindness); thus she feels compassion for her own intellect. Hence her own self as intellect (not to mention Tim)! Her heart (compassion, agape) wins out over her mind (intellect); she, then, is the Buddha’s Bodhisattva; “turning her back from Nirvana” is her staying with Bill. Look how her attitude toward him evolves in the book from fear and dislike to respect to tender love in the end. It is as if she has become Tim’s mother. She ministers to a ruinous way of talking as an affectation analogous to her own. The style created her!

  [79:I-71] In the “Bishop” novel I saw how “style” can give rise to a specific unique actual person (e.g., Angel Archer), so it is possible for verbal information to give rise—to create, give birth to—an actual concrete unique person who was not there before.

  [79:I-72] There is a stupendous and obvious point I’m missing about Angel. It would—and I did!—require an extraordinary viewpoint character to both intellectually and emotionally understand the Bishop. To do it adequately he or she would have to be highly qualified in terms of verbal skills, intellectual comprehension and tenderness; otherwise the “lens” that she consists of would be inadequate. Thus Angel and hence the style (since it is her ratiocination) was in fact created by Jim Pike. [ . . . ] She as interpretive lens would in fact have to exceed him in all respects; thus Jim not I is the author of Angel Archer. From word one line one page one a certain unique formidable intellect and spiritual soul equipped with common sense but, even more, aesthetic Love, would have to exist as lens; this is why I could not discard those opening 4 pages. And she is wounded due to his death—all these traits and wounded too.

  Thus (as I say) I did not create Angel Archer: my understanding of and loving Jim did—so Jim (in a certain real sense) did. In the novel I am true to the logic of fictional narrative technique: Tim/Jim is seen always and only through her mind. Thus Angel Archer is not my soul but is Jim’s. His Monitor or recording Angel (sic!), his AI voice, not mine. His anima or other, not mine. But, in that case, how do I have access to her? Here is a vast mystery. I am not sure I know the answer. Is my soul his soul?

  There is no doubt: if the 3 books are read (VALIS, Divine Invasion and Bishop Timothy Archer) it is clear that the Parousia is here. Not a theophany is involved but resurrection, of a given man (not of Christ which after all took place 2,000 years ago). This (resurrection) (of Jim/Tim) is the beginning and it comes trailing clouds of collateral verification, like spinoffs: These in all constitute vast plural indices of the Parousia. Each novel in turn verifies and amplifies and explains the previous one.

  The Dead Shall Live

  The living die

  And music shall untune the sky. 20

  [79:I-74] Most amazing of all, I did not perceive in advance that Bishop Archer would be the 3rd book of the VALIS trilogy; in fact I had conceived of it as repudiating (!) the Valis notions/mysticism. But on the contrary it nails the whole thing down and follows logically; in view of this, no wonder I turned down the Blade Runner offer to do the “Bishop Archer” book! It had to be written! To complete the total message with the given instance of a specific human returning from the dead (proving that the Parousia is here).

  [79:I-77] At the very end of the “Bishop Archer” book it would appear that Bill thinks he is—not just Tim Archer—but Christ! (“the expositor”). Thus indeed in no sense is he any longer:

  Bill ↔ Tim

  He is:

  Tim ↔ Christ

  This is certainly madness. But it raises the theological possibility that he is—this is—the Parousia. Yet Angel is right; Bill is destroyed in the process (like Nietzsche with Dionysus). So the ending is spiritually up and humanly down.

  * * *

  [79:I-81] What I have shown is what the best intellectual mind—as correctly represented by a young Berkeley intellectual woman—can do and cannot do; it can go so far (represented by her “abscessed tooth and the Commedia” night) but it can go no farther—as represented by her rejection of Christ (yes, Christ!) at the end: she walks away. This is a penetrating analysis of the intellectual mind: what it can do (a very great deal) and what it can’t do (make the final leap). And she knows it. This is what the “Bishop Archer” book is about: Angel is a pure aesthetic-intellectual, able to go so far but unable to make the final leap to Christ. Thus “Berkeley” (as paradigm of the intelligent, sensitive mind) is both lauded and stigmatized. This is a fine book; it both praises and deplores, and correctly. Thus one deduces the existence of the divine by its absence: the failure of her final leap (i.e., my meta-abstraction). Thus I was able to do specifically what Angel was not able to do; I left Berkeley. The topic is: “The limitations of the reasoning mind.” Bishop Archer as Bill calls to her but she does not hear. It is not reasonable. Angel fell short, missed the mark, and this is what constitutes sin, this falling short of the mark. Thus this novel must end as it does. Bill may have made it; we can’t be sure. But what we are sure of is that although Angel came close she did not; thus I demonstrate the limits of reason.

  What is needed is an orthogonal breakthrough, which I achieved (in 2-3-74). Ursula21 is the basis of Angel: Many virtues but in the end self-limiting.

  The mind “knows” in advance what is possible and what is impossible: it is intelligent, rational, educated and tender; but it is not devout. It does not know how to capitulate to the impossible and accept it as real. [ . . . ]

  Thus the novel is a damning indictment of pure intelligence lacking faith. She is so close but cannot make the final crucial leap. This does not deal with Berkeley except as a paradigm of reasoning: The intelligent, sensitive, educ
ated mind—just how far can it go. The great quantum leap that I call the “meta-abstraction” is lacking. Yet all the clues, for it, are there. It is, as she says, a machine; it plods on and cannot leap the crucial gap to foolishness (as it were). It cannot pass over from words (“I am a word junky, a word disease”) to the supra or non verbal, the purely conceptual (and non-verbal: absolute abstraction). The paradoxes are obscured to her, despite Barefoot’s best efforts (i.e., “the foolish come for the words; the wise eat the sandwich”).

  The Bishop is a topic in this novel only insofar as he holds out the gift of Divine foolishness to her, which she, in her rationality, rejects (at the end). She is the real topic. But the Bishop offers the cure and solution, which she rejects; yet she comes so close! She has failed: I must not regard her as a success; I must not strive to emulate her. I love her but in the final analysis I must reject her solution; it falls short of true comprehension: of an essentially irrational reality (that is not available to linear reason). The ultimate mystery of reality eludes her. She would have to believe the impossible. Only when one can believe the impossible is one truly free (of one’s self-imposed prison). (The BIP!!!) One is pitting one’s finite intellect against God: Satan’s original rebellion redefined for the modern world.

  [79:I-86] Perhaps the great leap—meta-abstraction—is when we see the peak experiences as signs pointing to Valis which in itself is unknowable: my “surd”; this may be my “meta-abstraction”; viz: suddenly you intuit that the peak experience—all peak experiences—are signs pointing to a “thing” (Valis) in itself unknowable, and are not to be taken in themselves as “real,” but, rather, signify (i.e., point to) reality. Since they seem not only real but ultra-real, then all at once “reality” is viewed as a signifier of reality, which (reality) in itself cannot be apprehended (directly); and this may be what my meta-abstraction was all about, which explains why I can’t put it into words (i.e., what I realized; since I realized only a sign, not the “thing” signified: this fits in with, e.g., Zen Buddhism, etc.).*

  [79:I-87] So the meta-abstraction is the sudden insight that the most intense experiences with reality—i.e., that which is most real—is only an abstract sign pointing to an actual totally unseen reality beyond, which causes us to experience the peak moments for the purpose of alluding to itself, creating the peak experiences as an interface by which to register on us; whereupon these ultra intense experiences—taken to be ultimately real—suddenly become only signs, hence abstract: i.e., WORDS about reality and not themselves reality. They merely allude to but are not; they possess no sein, and yet they constitute the most compelling “reality” we know!

  Within the framework of this realization, the statement “a perturbation in the reality field” conveys everything, in that reality is perceived as a field on which something beyond it intrinsically totally undetectable impinges, with the result that it—this totally intrinsically undetectable “thing”—becomes indirectly (inferentially) known to us—as if it is signaling to us but can signal to us only by perturbating the reality field. Thus we must construe “reality” as a medium on which this “thing” registers and makes itself available to us: my “surd.” The implications of this are simply stupendous: this “thing” evidently cannot directly register (impinge) on us. To suddenly grasp that we are compelled to give total assent to reality merely as a means by which we can inferentially know this “thing”—this may be the great leap, my “meta-abstraction.” As in going from “2 cows and 2 cows = 4 cows” to “2 and 2 = 4”; it is an abstraction, and it does involve a sudden vast leap. Like that of seeing the relationship between the word “banana” and a banana; the word points to the thing. . . .

  [79:I-89] So to say the universe is info is only half the story, and the lesser half: the surd (1) is not discussed. But Bishop is on the right path: Barefoot’s “speech for the foolish, sandwich for the wise”; it may not be possible to come any closer to moksa in a verbal presentation; Angel may be doomed because a book is words!

  Words stand in relationship to reality as signifiers (normal abstraction).

  Reality stands in relationship to X as signifier (meta-abstraction). What is this “X”? We don’t know; we have only the “signifier,” reality.

  But if reality is abstracted into a signifier we can fathom that it (reality) points, although we can see what is pointed to; however, this “X” perturbs the reality field and so is knowable by inference (its perturbation of reality). It renders reality (into) a language. This is why I saw: the plasmate; the set-ground; and rest-motion; and linking-relinking: “X” was perturbing reality causing it to be in relation to “X” a language (i.e., as the word “banana” is to banana). Thus in these 7 years I’ve only had half the picture, but sensed the “surd.” The AI voice has tried to aid me.

  The Tao? “X” does not exist. It is not real. Yet it perturbs reality and causes reality to impinge on us, compelling our assent. This is purposeful.

  My God—what is pointed to is Ubik, Lem’s analysis of Ubik (“uncanny one-way intrusions”) and “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” and The Tibetan Book of the Dead and my 10 volume meta-novel.22 In 2-3-74 I never saw the real world; I just saw our semi-real world impinged on, perturbed, made into language.

  * * *

  [79:I-94] The meta-abstraction is to (suddenly) perceive reality as signifier and not as the thing signified. Hence as a result (of this meta-abstraction) reality would then very soon assume the aspect of information and language and signs because this is how our minds conceive of “signifier”; languages, information and signs is the way we signify (reality, things: words pointing to something of which they are pure abstraction).

  I’ve been on the lip of this realization ever since I developed my “surd” theory. Now it is clear why words and even concepts fail to represent what I call Valis; they deal with reality, but in this case reality itself is the abstract signs, words, concepts, info, language; so human language would be twice removed, hence not relatively ineffective but totally so.

  So all the “language” elements that I saw (e.g., plasmate, set-ground, linking-relinking, rest-motion, MMSK) may in fact be metaphors constructed by my own mind to express the fact that as the word “banana” is to banana, reality is to X.

  [79:I-95] My mind was scanning reality as (reality as) language, trying to read it and thus know X. This failed.

  One can (apparently) only know that X exists but not what X is. In which case, the closest approximation conceptually may be that which Anokhi expresses.

  However, my intuition is that since what it (X) manifests itself as is beauty, then the Sufis may be right and its essence is what we term beauty.

  But it would be very hard for this meta-abstraction to take the form of words because to say, “Reality is not that which is signified but is, rather, the signifier,” seems (even maybe is) oxymoronic (except that the AI voice knew how to express it: “a perturbation in the reality field”—a brilliant way to convey it).

  [ . . . ]

  Thus my poor brain was converted into a putative deciphering machine in its attempt to read the information; but (it would seem) the information can’t be read because it is only metaphorically information; that is, it stands to X as information (such as we generate) stands to reality. But it is only like information; it is information only in that it signifies something outside itself; hence all the info I’ve received is either cryptic or incoherent—although containing mystifying allusions to something; there is, then a something.

  It’s like Borges’ story “The Library of Babel.”

  Well, then; perhaps my 2-74 meta-abstraction was not Plato’s recovery of the Forms. But a new way of perceiving reality (distantly related to Plato’s perception of the Forms; so-to-speak analogous to it), resulting in my Kantian ordering categories fundamentally revising themselves (or rather my brain discarded the old ones—space, time and causation—and adapted the new one of conceiving everything in terms of abstract information). This is more
accurate, but the main goal does not have to do with reality at all but that of which reality (as a field) is the signifier. “It’s only information.” My brain was telling itself. “But what that information is about can’t seem to be found in the information!” My brain tried to break the “cypher” without success. It may be information generated by and in my own brain (which is why the whole thing resembles Ubik and my own prior thought formations). Yet there is something there, capable of perturbing the reality field.

  This of course is why “God” acts through or as causation; he can (he is X) only impinge through reality, not directly.

  But as I said initially, a peak (ultra-intense) experience is X compelling our assent to an absolute degree (in the experience at hand; he—it—can do this anytime anywhere with anything): This is the closest we come to experiencing X; put another way, all peak experiences are of X (expressed in, through, as world).

  [79:I-99] “The age of iron is filibustering so we won’t notice that everything we have [that we treasure] has been taken away from us”—hypnogogic thought. Referring to “Acts”? The Messianic age? Strange thought. The real world?

  [79:I-105] 5:30 A.M.: The phenomenal world is what we conceive it to be: in space-time, or information; it has no absolute existence. Its highest utility—pragmatic value—is—would be—to point as a sign to the absolute and be a means by which we could and can know the absolute which does have a genuine intrinsic existence on-its-own but is to us and for us unknowable. Thus I have sharply heightened the use-value of the phenomenal world by shaping it—rendering it—into and as information about the absolute; this is a titanic achievement. I have made the Kantian ordering categories an instrument—not just to shape the phenomenal world—but to (use it to) point to the absolute, which is genuine. Thus the phenomenal world no longer (for me) simply points back to my own mind (and its ordering categories) but points away from me to the absolute; points as information about the absolute, the not-me. This is a vast evolution: it is phenomenal world leading out, not back to me: out and away and to, rather than being circular; rather than simply reporting my own mind back to me (in terms of time, space and most of all causation). This is what I have done: made of the phenomenal world a bridge to the absolute, the not-me.