The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  Mitleid (German): Compassion, pity.

  Mitwelt (German): The immediate environment. One of the three terms for world used by the existentialist psychologist Ludwig Binswanger. See Umwelt and Eigenwelt.

  MMSK: See macrometasomakosmos.

  moksa (Sanskrit): Ultimate release, liberation.

  monad: The philosopher Leibniz described the things in the world as independent but interconnected entities—which he called "monads"—operating according to a pre-established divine harmony.

  mystery religions, or mystery cults: Religious cults in the ancient Greco-Roman world whose members engaged in esoteric rituals, often involving the ritual and ecstatic reenactment of a mythical narrative. The most influential and long-lived of these rites were the Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece.

  Nag Hammadi: Egyptian town near the site of the 1945 discovery of thirteen ancient leather-bound codices hidden in a sealed jar. Dating from the second century, these Coptic manuscripts probably belonged to the library of a Gnostic Christian community. One of the most notable Nag Hammadi texts is the only complete copy of the Gospel of Thomas, an important source for Dick's religious reflections.

  negentropic: Bringing order to a disordered or entropic system.

  noös, or nous (Greek): Mind, reason, divine or human. Associated words are noetic (adjective; "of the mind") and noein (verb; "to think or realize").

  noösphere: Geophysicist Vladimir Vernadsky argued that, along with the biosphere, lithosphere, and atmosphere, the earth has acquired a mental or psychic "sphere": a noösphere created through thought and focused attention. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin popularized the concept of noösphere in his treatment of "Point Omega."

  NT and OT: New Testament and Old Testament.

  ontogon: A neologism meaning an individual being or object, as contrasted to an ideal or Platonic form. See phylogon. Dick coins the terms from phylogeny and ontogony, used in evolutionary theory and depth psychology to describe the relationship between individual and species life.

  ontology: The philosophy of being; ontologists ask questions about the nature and function of reality itself and about what it means for things to exist.

  Ornstein, Robert (1942–): American psychologist, author of The Psychology of Consciousness (1972). His views on the brain's hemispheres and their differing roles in consciousness were brought to mainstream attention when he was covered by Time magazine in 1974.

  Orphics: An ancient Greek and Hellenic mystery cult devoted to the poet Orpheus, as well as Dionysus in the form of Zagreus; Orphic myths and rituals were particularly concerned with death and resurrection.

  orthogonal time: Moving perpendicularly to the conventional and spurious sense of linear time, orthogonal time is, for Dick, time in its genuine mode. In a 1975 essay, "Man, Android, and Machine," Dick describes orthogonal time as containing within a simultaneous plane "everything which was, just as grooves on an LP contain that part of the music which has already been played; they don't disappear after the stylus tracks them."

  Owl: Dick's unfinished final novel, The Owl in Daylight.

  palintropos harmonie, or palintonos harmonie: A term used in Heraclitus's fragment 51, which compares the mutual adjustment and harmony of variant things and processes to the relationship of bow and lyre. Variant sources supply palintropos (backward-turning) or palintonos (backward-stretching) as the first word. Dick uses the term in both its variants in the Exegesis.

  Palm Tree Garden, or PTG: The spiritually redeemed and ontologically genuine world, revealed to Dick in January-February 1975, when southern California seemed to transform into the Levant. In chapter 18 of Deus Irae (1976, co-written with Roger Zelazny), the vision of Dr. Abernathy—written by Dick alone—represents the Palm Tree Garden.

  Palmer Eldritch: Industrial magnate who unleashes psychedelic havoc in Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) after he returns from the Proxima system as a drug-dealing demiurge. Eldritch's "three stigmata" are based on the vision of a "vast visage of perfect evil" that Dick saw in the skies over Marin County in 1963, which also induced in him a spell of regular Episcopalian worship at a local church.

  panentheism: A metaphysical and religious doctrine holding that God (theos) is both transcendent and immanent, both beyond all and yet "in all" (pan-en-). This teaching is sometimes portrayed through the image of the cosmos as God's body, God's relationship to the universe being roughly analogous to the mind's relationship to the body—again, both "in" and "beyond" at the same time.

  pantheism: A metaphysical and religious doctrine that holds that God is identified with everything in the world and that everything in the world is God. This is in striking contrast to traditional theism, which holds that God transcends ordinary reality.

  Pantocrator (Greek): "Almighty," a name of God that accents his omnipotence.

  Paracelsus (1493–1541): A Swiss Renaissance hermeticist, alchemist, and physician with the remarkable full name of Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. Through empirical experiments and innovative occult theories, Paracelsus broke the reigning orthodox concepts of disease, explored botanical remedies, and pioneered the use of minerals and chemicals in medicine.

  Paraclete, sometimes Parakletos (Greek): Literally, advocate or helper; in Christianity, the Holy Spirit.

  Parmenides (c. early fifth century B.C.E.): Pre-Socratic philosopher and founder of the Eleatic school. In his poem On Nature, he describes reality as a mixture of two forms: the truth of the One and the mere appearance of the world of multiplicity, about which we can hold only opinion. As one of the first philosophers to consider the abstract principle of Being, he is considered a founder of metaphysics.

  parousia (Greek): Presence, advent; in Christianity, the term generally refers to the Second Coming of Christ.

  Parsifal: A three-act opera by Richard Wagner (1813–1883), based on the epic Germanic poem Parzival, about the titular knight's quest for the Holy Grail. In Wagner's story, which is also influenced by legends of the Buddha, Parsifal embodies a "holy fool" who helps initiate the powerful act of redemption that closes the opera.

  Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C.E.–50 C.E.): A Hellenistic Jew who used a variety of Greek philosophical concepts to interpret and defend the Jewish scriptures. His writings were particularly important to the early Church fathers, who were probably influenced by his association of Logos with the governing plan of creation and the "word of God" that bears the Lord's message in the Hebrew Bible.

  phylogon: A neologism referring to a general principle or archetype, as contrasted to an individual object or being; roughly analogous to Plato's forms. See ontogon.

  Pike, James (1913–1969): American Episcopalian bishop, writer, and friend of Dick's. Pike, who questioned traditional doctrines such as the Trinity and the virginity of Mary, was accused of heresy and resigned his Cali fornia post in 1966. His son Jim committed suicide the same year, and Pike held'séances, one of which was attended by Dick and Nancy Hackett, in an attempt to contact his son's spirit. Pike died in the Israeli desert while researching the Essenes and the historical Jesus. Dick fictionalized the last years of his life in The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982).

  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 thro
ugh 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 re
invigorated 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.