The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  86. (German) Effigy, idol.

  87. The brightest star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus, the seat of a galactic communications hub in The Divine Invasion.

  88. (Latin, paraphrase) I am made to tremble, and I fear. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. Deliver me, Lord, on that day (from the Requiem Mass of the Roman Catholic Church).

  89. 1 Cor 15:51–55.

  PART FOUR

  1. (German) My own face; my own form.

  2. STP, aka DOM (2,5-dimethoxy-4-methylamphetamine), is an unusually long-lasting psychedelic compound first synthesized by Alexander Shulgin.

  3. A Greek hymn in honor of Dionysus.

  4. (German) The red flag.

  5. A 1978 book by R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl Ruck that argues that psychedelic substances were consumed at Eleusis.

  6. See note 41, page 83.

  7. See note 90, page 410.

  8. This phrase originated in a talk that Ursula K. Le Guin gave at Emory University in early 1981, in which she reportedly discussed Dick's preoccupation with "unresolvable metaphysical matters." Michael Bishop, who was present at the talk, wrote to Dick, who responded in an open letter to the Science Fiction Review.

  9. (Chinese) Permanent Tao.

  10. This excerpt is drawn from a letter to Patricia Warrick.

  11. An idea expressed by Islamic philosophers, most notably Al-Ash`ari and Al-Ghazali, but shared by many medieval Christian and Jewish philosophers as well. In the West, this idea is related to occasionalism, the view (most famously expressed by Nicolas Malebranche) that causality is an illusion and God is the efficient cause of all that exists.

  12. (German) Friends, not these sounds ... (The first line of Beethoven's redaction of Schiller's "Ode to Joy" in his Ninth Symphony.)

  13. Real Elapsed Time.

  14. (German) Who shall deliver me? (Most likely drawn from Bach Cantata BWV 4, Ich elender Mensch, wer wird mich erlösen.)

  15. Over this and the following two folders, Dick outlines, writes, and reflects on The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

  16. A version of the material in the following excerpt appears in the first chapter of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

  17. The following fragment was incorporated into The Transmigration of Timothy Archer as one of Bishop Archer's speculations.

  18. Partly inspired by a dream recorded in [90:6A] above, the Book of the Spinners is a Dick invention that also appears in The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

  19. See note 51, page 330.

  20. John Dryden, "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day."

  21. Ursula K. Le Guin.

  22. "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" is a 1976 short story by John Varley. PBS adapted it into a TV movie in 1983 as part of the same project that produced the film version of Ursula K. Le Guin's Dick tribute The Lathe of Heaven.

  23. Existential psychologist Ludwig Binswanger, from whom Dick drew the notion of "tomb world," described three realms: Eigenwelt, Mitwelt, and Umwelt. See Glossary.

  24. (German terms used by Martin Heidegger) Geworfenheit: thrownness, the quality of finding ourselves already thrown into existence, as if by accident. Das unheimlich: the uncanny; literally, "not at home."

  25. (German) Actual.

  26. In The Ghost in the Machine (1967), Arthur Koestler defines "holon" as a self-organizing dissipative structure that is simultaneously a whole and a part of a larger whole, and ultimately of a "holarchy" of holons.

  27. (Latin) I am afraid; deliver me, Oh Lord, on that day. (Adapted from the Requiem Mass.)

  28. Dick is thinking here of the clinamen, the term the ancient Roman philosopher Lucretius used to describe the indeterminate bustle and swerve of atoms in the void.

  29. (Greek) Love of humanity.

  30. The following three dated letters have been moved to this folder from folder 56 to preserve chronology.

  31. Edmund Meskys was the editor—with Felice Rolfe at the time of Dick's letter—of the long-running and award-winning S-F fanzine Niekas.

  32. Dick sent copies of his so-called Tagore letter—the September 23, 1981, letter to Edmund Meskys reprinted here—to eighty-five people.

  33. Karen Silkwood was a health and labor activist who died under mysterious circumstances in November 1974.

  34. (Latin) Universal exemplars in the divine mind. (Analogous to Plato's forms.)

  35. This occurs in chapter 6 of The Divine Invasion, where Dick gives the character Galina the fish dream that he mentions throughout the Exegesis, beginning in 1975 ("the renewing fish that's sliced forever").

  36. The Sepher Yetzirah, or The Book of Formation, is an early work of Jewish esoteric mysticism that describes the creation of the universe through numbers and Hebrew letters.

  37. Luke and Acts are written by the same author and are frequently considered as a single work.

  38. The practice of Manichaeism involved strict dietary laws. The elect avoided foods thought to be "dark" (including meat) in favor of foods containing more "light," primarily light-colored fruits and vegetables. The process of digestion was considered to free the light particles trapped inside the food.

  39. Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality (1963), p. 106.

  40. (Latin) Law of retribution. (Frequently linked, though Roman in origin, to the legal principle of "an eye for an eye" from Ex 21:23–25.)

  41. Hans Jonas wrote the seminal book The Gnostic Religion (1958), which links ancient Gnosticism to modern existentialism.

  42. This is the first mention of The Owl in Daylight, the novel left unfinished at Dick's death.

  43. In Mt 27:46 and Mk 15:34, Jesus quotes the opening verse of Ps 22 from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

  44. This entry, including the following dream and its subsequent analysis, is entirely typewritten.

  45. In 1947 Dick roomed with and befriended a number of gay Berkeley artists and poets whom he met through his high school friend George Ackerman. These included the poets Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer, who shared many of his esoteric, metaphysical, and literary interests. Vladimir Horowitz, one of the premier pianists of his day, was also gay.

  46. The Eleatics were a school of pre-Socratic philosophers founded in the fifth century B.C. by Parmenides and including the paradox-loving Zeno.

  47. (Greek) Cosmic mind.

  48. The term "secrecy theme" refers to Jesus's commands to his disciples not to reveal that he is the Messiah. Passages on the "Messianic secret" do appear in Luke (see 4:41 and 8:56), but the theme is most pronounced in the Gospel of Mark.

  49. The public interest law firm that represented Karen Silkwood and journalists investigating the Iran-Contra affair. Its cofounder, William J. Davis, was a Jesuit priest.

  50. Peer Gynt (1867) is a five-act play by Henrik Ibsen that combines surreal folklore, poetry, social satire, and realistic episodes.

  51. Tales of Hoffmann (1881) was an opera by Jacques Offenbach, based on the short fantasy stories of German Romanticist E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776–1822).

  52. "The Pulley" by George Herbert, one of Dick's favorite poets.

  53. Maimonides (1138–1204) was the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period; his influential Guide to the Perplexed attempted to reconcile Aristotelian thought and Judaism.

  54. (German) Community. (An apparent neologism based on Gemeinschaft.)

  55. (German) Loneliness.

  56. This may be the AI Voice trying out its German. Roughly, "Woman, sing for our friends."

  57. (German) Nearby.

  58. (German) Friends; joy.

  59. Ted Sturgeon's 1971 story "Dazed" involves a transcendent being incarnated in order to restore the balance of yin and yang.

  60. Dick here is fusing and/or confusing Eleusis with the Elysian Fields, the most pleasant environs of the ancient Greek Underworld.

  61. Benjamin Crème (1922–) is a long-standing New Age apocalyptic prophet who has often spoken of the coming of Maitreya, or the World Teache
r. In 1982 he proclaimed that Maitreya, aka the Christ, was living within the Asian community of Brick Lane in London and would shortly announce himself to the world media.

  62. The Age of Aquarius is an astrologic epoch based on the precession of the equinoxes and a popular theme in many New Age accounts of contemporary spiritual transformation. It follows the current Age of Pisces, whose fish symbolism has often been associated with Christianity.

  63. See note 116, page 205.

  64. Helena Patrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) cofounded the Theosophical Society, an esoteric order that held that world history is directed by invisible hidden masters.

  65. The Glimmung is a godlike alien from Plowman's Planet (aka Sirius Five) in Galactic Pot-Healer (1969), one of Dick's more Jungian works.

  66. This brief but valuable segment has been moved here from folder 55 to preserve continuity.

  67. (Greek) Savior.

  68. Sepher Yetzirah, or The Book of Creation, a sacred text of Kabbala Judaism, in its 1887 translation by W.W. Wescott.

  69. Here Dick uses Greek letters (similar to those in the word [soter], which he inscribed above) to write sorer, which resembles soror, the Latin word for sister.

  Glossary

  2-3-74, sometimes 2-74 or 3-74: A series of extraordinary events, beginning in February 1974 and continuing through March and beyond, that forms the main subject of the Exegesis.

  acosmism: A doctrine that denies the apparent reality of the universe as something apart from God or the Absolute.

  Acts: The Book of Acts in the New Testament, written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke, tells the history of the early apostolic age following the death and resurrection of Christ. It is sometimes called "The Gospel of the Holy Spirit," owing to its depiction of the role played by the Holy Spirit in the growth of the early church. Dick asserts a significant and unintended correspondence between Acts and his novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974).

  agape (Greek): One of several Greek words for love, as distinguished from eros (sexual love) and philia (friendship); often used to describe God or Christ's love for mankind. In Dick's use, which draws on the apostle Paul's description of transcendent love in 1 Corinthians 13, the term is identified with empathy.

  Ahura Mazd, Ahura Mazda, or Ormazd: The highest god of Zoroastrianism, the creator and sustainer of truth. In The Cosmic Puppets (1957) a small town is discovered to be the battleground between Ormazd and his eternal opponent, Ahriman.

  AI Voice: Artificial Intelligence Voice, sometimes called "Voice" or "Spirit." A term coined by Dick for the hypnagogic voice that he heard often in 1974–75 and intermittently until his death. Many of the voice's sayings are recorded in the Exegesis. Despite the term, Dick does not consistently hold that the voice is technological in nature. He often characterizes it as "female" and sometimes attributes it to the Gnostic goddess Sophia and his own sister Jane.

  ajna chakra: The so-called Third Eye, one of seven chakras or "wheels" described in Hindu tantric and yoga texts.

  als ob (German): As if.

  anamnesis (Greek): Recollection, abrogation of amnesia. For Plato, anamnesis—the recollection of the world of ideas in which the soul dwelled before incarnating in human form—explains the human capacity for understanding abstract, universal truths, such as the geometric theo rems of Euclid. In Dick's more Gnostic understanding, it also implies the recollection of the soul's origins beyond the fallen or occluded world.

  ananke (Greek): The blindness that follows hubris; also, a chthonic goddess who personifies necessity and compulsion.

  Androids: One of Dick's most morally complex novels, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) was optioned and produced as the Ridley Scott film Blade Runner (1982). Left on the cutting room floor was the novel's fictional religion, "Mercerism," whose adherents technologically and empathetically merge with Wilber Mercer as he climbs a hill, is stoned to death, descends into a tomb world, and arises, in an endless cycle.

  anima (Latin): Translation of Greek term psyche, meaning "life" or "soul." Psychologist Carl Jung used the terms anima and animus to describe the true inner self of human beings; for men, the anima is generally a female figure.

  Anokhi (Hebrew): A form of the personal pronoun meaning "I" or "I myself." In Dick's use, it refers primarily to Exodus 20:2: "Anokhi YHWH Elohekha" ("I [am] YHWH your God"). More generally for Dick, anokhi stands for self-awareness and consciousness. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982) features discussion of the "Anokhi mushroom," a hallucinogenic drug that enables communion with the divine.

  Archer, Angel: Protagonist of Dick's final novel, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982).

  Asklepios: Greek god of healing and medicine; his temples were also sites of oracular dream incubation.

  astral determinism: The belief that the destiny of individual human beings is governed by the stars or planets, which in some Gnostic cosmologies are personified as the lower planetary rulers or archons.

  Atman (Sanskrit): The eternal Self or divine core of the human being, distinct from the ahamkara (literally, the "I-maker") or ego with which we normally, and falsely, identify. In Vedanta, Atman is identified with Brahman.

  Attic Greek: A dialect of ancient Greek spoken in Attica.

  Augenblick (German): Literally, "eye view"; moment.

  Augustine (C.E. 354–430): Bishop of Hippo, Saint and Doctor of the Church. In the Exegesis, Augustine's allegorical interpretation of Revelation is contrasted with literalistic millenarianism.

  Bacchae, The: Roman name for the maenads, female figures of Greek mythology who follow the god Dionysus and pursue religious ecstasy through intoxication, dance, and ritual sacrifice. Also a play by Eu ripedes, in which Dick saw parallels to Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974).

  Bardo Thödol: Commonly known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, this Tibetan Buddhist text, traditionally considered to be written by Padmasambhava, describes the experiences the mind undergoes as it transits between death and rebirth, an intermediary period known as bardo. Dick was familiar with the text through its initial translation by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, whose reissue in 1960 featured an important introduction by Carl Jung.

  Bergson, Henri (1859–1941): A French philosopher who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, Bergson was known for his theories of duration and élan vital, the lively impetus that distinguishes living systems from machines. With his concept of duration, Bergson hoped to describe the qualitative nature of the subjective experience of time rather than the objective measurements of the clock. Dick's experience of "non-linear" incursions of time from the future and his meditations on the distinction between living organisms and machines found resonance in Bergson's work.

  bicameral: Term taken from Julian Jaynes's popular book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976). Jaynes argues that our minds were originally split along hemispheric lines, which allowed voices from one side of the brain to be heard by the other as if they were external commands or the voices of gods.

  Black Iron Prison, also BIP: Dick's term for the prison world of political tyranny and determinism he glimpsed beneath the veneer of Orange County in March 1974. He later wrote that upon perceiving it, he realized that he had been living in it and writing about it his whole life. In his dualistic cosmologies, the BIP is opposed to the Palm Tree Garden, or PTG.

  Boehme or Böhme, Jacob (c. 1575–1624): German shoemaker and mystic whose 1600 vision was induced by the play of light on a pewter dish. His esoteric theory of higher and lower triads anticipated Hegel's dialectic, and his notion of Urgrund was important to Dick.

  Boucher, Anthony (1922–1968): Science fiction editor, author, and friend of Dick's. As editor of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Boucher purchased the first story Dick sold, the tale "Roog" (1953).

  Brahman: A concept from the Vedic tradition that generally refers to the uncreated substance of the universe that pervades all things; also the precursor to the creator god B
rahmā. The Advaita Vedanta of Sankara insists on the ultimate identity of Brahman and Atman.

  Bruno, Giordano (1548–1600): Italian astronomer, mathematician, and hermetic philosopher whose theories about the infinity of the universe anticipated modern cosmology. Bruno is chiefly remembered for having been burned at the stake in Rome.

  BTA: "Bishop Timothy Archer," working title for The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982).

  Buber, Martin (1878–1965): Austrian-born Jewish existentialist philosopher. See I-It and I-Thou relationship.

  Buckman, Felix: Character in Dick's novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974). A police official in a militaristic state, he experiences an unexpected and compassionate epiphany in the novel's conclusion.

  Burroughs, William S. (1914–1997): Experimental Beat writer. Burroughs's notions of reality as a control system and language as an extraterrestrial virus clearly resonated with Dick, who, in 1978, experimented with the cut-up method developed by Swiss artist Brion Gysin and deployed by Burroughs.

  Calvin, John (1509–1564): French Protestant theologian. In the Exegesis, Calvin appears primarily as a proponent of the idea that prelapsarian human beings had extraordinary capabilities.

  "Chains of Air," or "Chains ... Web": The short story "Chains of Air, Web of Aether" (1980), later revised and incorporated into The Divine Invasion (1981).

  Claudia: Claudia Krenz Bush, a graduate student at Idaho State University who corresponded with Dick while working on her master's thesis. Dick later refers to his early Exegesis as "mostly letters to Claudia."

  Corpus Christi (Latin): Body of Christ. Dick also uses the term in the more theological sense of the mystical body of the Church.

  crypte morphosis (Greek): Latent shape or form. One of the Greek phrases that came to Dick in his dreams in 1974. In the Exegesis he interprets the phrase in light of Heraclitus's fragment 54, "Latent form is the master of obvious form," and fragment 123, "The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself."