The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  [back]

  ***

  * In this passage, Dick anticipates some of the most revolutionary physics of the late twentieth century, especially Edward Fredkin's idea that underlying quantum mechanics and particle physics is a digital substructure, from which the former phenomena emerge as a result of its computations. There is an interesting tension between imagining the computer as the lowest, most fundamental level of reality, which is Fredkin's position, and Dick's vision here that the computer is somehow above the phenomenal world. While one may suppose that Dick's meta-computer would be the ultimate cognitive machine (hence Dick's identification of it with "God"), the implication of intentionality and meta-consciousness would not be a necessary (or even a possible) consequence of Fredkin's notion of a computer at the lowest level of reality. In both cases, however, the positing of a digital machine leads to the important consequence that reality is fundamentally discrete rather than continuous. Time and space, in Fredkin's view, operate like the frames of a movie. Rather than the continuous fabric of reality we think we experience with time and space, both are actually discrete, and the illusion of continuity is created because the frames flash too fast for us to detect.—NKH

  [back]

  ***

  * With this folder, Dick returns to handwriting, and from here on out the folder contents are increasingly scattered. One folder may include chunks of several distinct entries, suggesting an indeterminate amount of missing material. At least some of the rearranging is clearly deliberate: several long folders (81, 89, 90, 91) continue to use the Roman numerals that started with folder 1, as if he is picking and choosing from Exegesis entries with some editorial purpose (though the logic of these choices is, unsurprisingly, enigmatic). He also begins to introduce alphabetic letters to his numbering system, which significantly help the work of sequencing, though questions remain: there are at least three distinct alphabetical sequences in 1981 and '82, none of them complete. Rather than attempt to reconstruct the scattered entries, we have opted in almost every case to present existing folders as is; exceptions will be noted.—PJ

  [back]

  ***

  † Throughout this folder, Dick reflects on VALIS in light of the novel's publication in February 1981.—PJ

  [back]

  ***

  ‡ Dick's claim for the "revolutionary and political purpose in the style" strikes me as astute, if immodest. This reminds us again how Dick's late-life novelistic triumphs in VALIS and Transmigration, as well as in A Scanner Darkly earlier, depend on his reintegration of his abandoned mainstream aspirations and therefore display "anamnesis" of his earlier study of his would-be midcentury cohort. In a 1962 letter he advised an aspiring science fiction writer: "Read great writers like James Joyce and Pascal and Styron and Herb Gold and Philip Roth." He added: "Avoid other people interested in writing."—JL

  [back]

  ***

  * Dick is no more a philosopher or theologian than were Vincent van Gogh or L. Ron Hubbard. Dick was one of the most important American novelists of the last half of the twentieth century, and what he offered wasn't the clarity and rigor of a philosophical vision but the imagination and ambiguity of a literary one. The "philosophy" is erratic, even crackpot; but joined to the act of storytelling—and more importantly, joined to the act of creating characters as fucked up as their author—the result was a synthesis of imagination and idea that spoke more profoundly than any "philosophy" to the questions of Dick's work: What's the nature of reality? What's the nature of humanity? What's the nature of God?—SE

  [back]

  ***

  † There is something deeply illuminating about Dick's declaration that he is not a novelist but a fictionalizing philosopher whose concern is not art but truth. We are here in an apparent paradox, where the concern with truth, the classical goal of the philosopher, is not judged to be in opposition to fiction, but a consequence of fiction and a work of fiction. I think this puts Dick in the same neighborhood as that other self-consciously fictionalizing philosopher: Nietzsche.—SC

  [back]

  ***

  * After seven years of spinning an astonishing plethora of theories, the fact that Dick can now admit to his "failure" to provide a "workable" explanation is remarkable. His insight here that the abstract emerges from the noisy particulars of the world, rather than, as in the Platonic model, from an ideal reality of which empirical reality is a flawed copy, is a growing realization in science studies as well. In How the Laws of Physics Lie (1983) Nancy Cartwright argues that all that ever actually exists is the noise of the world, from which scientific "laws" are abstracted. In a very different sense, contemporary interpretations of quantum mechanics provide similar insights. Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann and his collaborator James Hartle have proposed that in the "quantum fog" represented as probability clouds, certain consistent world histories "decohere" (assume definite trajectories) and stabilize at a coarse-grained level of reality larger than the quantum scale. We might analogize their vision to tiny demons knitting the fabric of the universe according to different instructions. As such, the stabilities that constitute scientific "laws" emerge from a probabilistic froth at the quantum level in which different kinds of world trajectories are encoded. In this view, the froth counts as the ultimate reality and the stability as the epiphenomenon, as Dick intuited.—NKH

  [back]

  ***

  * This passage presents a supernaturalist theory of divine action: Christ acts on the world only by miracle, and never as a result of predictable, materialist, or mechanical causes. More fundamentally, however, it shows Dick's preoccupation with freedom from determinism: Christ is not constrained by the same forces that limit created beings and objects. He is an effect without a cause. We see this same rejection of determinism throughout the Exegesis: even when presenting reality as a moral test with a "right" answer, Dick is concerned to show that we must not be aware of the test, lest our actions be guided by the knowledge of a reward. For all his searching for the rules that govern reality, Dick is deeply dubious that God would impose unappealable rules on his creations. This issue will arise again later in Dick's consideration of the replacement of the Creator's rigid law with Christ's merciful love.—GM

  [back]

  ***

  * Dick here refers to Charles Hartshorne, who developed Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy into a full-fledged school of theological thought. Whitehead described a reality made up not of things but of a procession of events. Hartshorne, picking up from Whitehead's own theological exploration of this idea, depicts God as an absolute being in constant flux, relationally connected with and constantly affected by the universe. Dick's conception of the dialectical nature of both reality and deity dovetails strongly with process theology. But Hartshorne also insisted on the absolute free will of the universe and all within it—an idea that the more deterministic Dick does not seem to carry over into his subsequent exploration of reality as a binary system.—GM

  [back]

  ***

  * Here we see Dick's impulse toward synthesis shift into hyperdrive; he assembles multiple systems of thought and references as if they can be seamlessly joined without contradiction. What we gain from such a loose assemblage is a vague sense that these multiple systems have something in common, but the details of exactly how they can be articulated together remain elusive. For example, Capra argues that the field model of quantum mechanics posits the field as the fundamental entity in reality, in which the appearance of particles can be understood as "knots" or places where the field intensifies and begins to manifest itself as particles rather than waves. Hence it posits reality as an underlying continuum. This is in direct opposition to the basic assumption of the computational model of the universe, which argues that the ultimate nature of reality is discrete, not continuous. It is difficult to see how we can reconcile the sharp contrast between these two fundamental premises, not to mention the many other contradictions and irresolvable conflict
s that arise as the assemblage grows.—NKH

  [back]

  ***

  * Here Dick compares the binary forking model (derived from a computational model of the universe) to the "two slit" experiment that famously demonstrated that electrons can manifest as both waves and particles. When electrons are beamed at a single slit behind which sits a detector screen, they manifest as particles. However, when a second slit is added, interference waves appear. Depending on the experimental setup, then, electrons can appear as either waves or particles. Dick's analogy is based on the indeterminacy that a binary forking model and the two-slit model both imply. Subatomic particles demonstrate an indeterminacy expressed by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, in which the momentum and position cannot be co-specified with an accuracy greater than Planck's constant. With the binary forking model, indeterminacy arises because of the complexity of interactions between multiple independent agents acting simultaneously, as in a cellular automata model. In the former case, the observer becomes implicated in the supposedly "objective" state of the particle because he chooses the experimental setup; in the latter case, it is not the presence of the observer that prevents accurate prediction but rather the complexity of the simultaneous interactions. The two cases have different epistemological consequences and lead to different kinds of questions about the nature of reality. Again, we see here a suggestive gesture that, if worked out in rigorous details, raises more issues than it solves.—NKH

  [back]

  ***

  * For all its eccentricity, the Exegesis is ultimately a rational exercise: Dick develops a hypothesis, applies its framework to his experience, and examines how well the theory fits the facts of his experience (or at least his current shaping of those facts). Dick was never a writer of hard science fiction, and his stories don't generally adhere to a strict standard of scientific plausibility. But here he applies a loose variation on the scientific method to explain and rationalize his experiences. In this respect, the Exegesis shows more "scientific" influence than Dick's science fiction.—GM

  [back]

  ***

  * Here Dick offers what is perhaps the most striking rationale for his theorizing: the ability to formulate and conceptualize an experience so that the affect associated with the experience can be captured and re-evoked by meditating on the theory. Without doubt, a theory that does this would have utility for the person who evolved it; the question then is whether it would have the same or similar effect on people who did not have the original experience. I doubt that it would work this way for most people reading Dick's theories. By contrast, his fiction, with its rich contexts, suggestive characterizations, and haunting themes, clearly has this kind of power. His theorizing is important, then, not so much on its own account as for the insight it gives into his creative processes and the deep unconscious motivations that drive his fiction.—NKH

  [back]

  ***

  * I feel Dick struggling to reassure himself that God is at once more and less rational than Dick himself—whichever prospect seems less threatening at the moment. Dick spent many years and books trying to figure out God, his clearest and most vivid take (and, perversely, maybe most hopeful) up until the Exegesis probably being the utilitarian divine spray-can of Ubik. But for all of Dick's apparent attempts to reconcile a good god and a bad world, his creation of an altogether more malevolent alternate world—in which there persists not only the Roman Empire but its manifestation in the form of Richard Nixon, and in which God is doomed to be even more hapless and ineffectually benign—raises questions as to whether Dick really is looking for reconciliation or to expose a God who at least has failed us all, if not actually betrayed us. Or is He, as we've suspected all along, just not fully in charge?—SE

  [back]

  ***

  * The assertion that Dick's last three novels, in many (important) ways so divergent, should be read as a "trilogy" is annoying, to me anyway. As novels, they simply don't add up that way (nor is Divine Invasion at the level of the other two), yet the term sticks; here, Dick shows unmistakable investment in it himself. On the one hand, keep in mind that in the wake of Star Wars and Tolkien, what publishers called "Sci-Fi" briefly enjoyed a weird boom that made best-sellers out of some of the long-suffering writers Dick could view as peers—Robert Silverberg, Philip Jose Farmer, Frank Herbert, and others—and that nearly all of their commercial hits were in the form of declared "trilogies" (even if some of those involved four or more books). Why not ride the unlikely gravy train? On the other hand, here was a mind more than a little prone to view things as interconnected. He'd begun to see his long shelf of earlier works forming a single tapestry of meaning. Shouldn't these new ones braid together as well?—JL

  [back]

  ***

  * United Artists picked up an option for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in September 1973, netting Dick a check for $2,500. When it was announced that Ridley Scott would direct Harrison Ford in the $25 million movie, it was clear that Blade Runner, as it was to be titled, was designed to cash in on the success of Star Wars. Though Dick was skeptical of Hollywood, he was excited about the project, especially after seeing footage from the film. The movie's backers wanted Dick to write a novelization of the film based on the screenplay, which differs markedly from his novel. Dick was promised a $50,000 advance as well as a large cut from all print tie-ins if he would rewrite the book to more closely resemble the movie. Though the deal might have earned Dick as much as $400,000, the contract also stipulated that the original version of his book be taken out of print. After much soul searching, Dick turned down the offer and instead accepted a $7,500 advance on the mainstream novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Sadly, both The Transmigration of Timothy Archer and Blade Runner debuted after Dick's death.—DG

  [back]

  ***

  * Here Dick confronts one of the fundamental debates in the philosophy of mysticism. On the one hand, some modern thinkers assert that mystical experience—here rendered in the language of the human potential movement as Maslow's "peak experiences"—enables us to transcend conceptual thought and to directly glimpse reality as it is. In contrast, more skeptical voices insist that mystical experience is, like everything else, a construction; our groks are mediated by cultural expectations, conceptual filters (including linguistic signs), and the peculiarities imposed by the structures of human consciousness. Here Dick embraces this latter Kantian argument, but pushes it in the direction of more traditional claims of revelation. Peak experiences are not real in themselves, but neither are they simply projections or hiccups of the individual mind. Like everything else, experiences are signs. But through meta-abstraction, we can intuit them as a special kind of sign: an "ultra-real" (or hyper-real) sign that points, not back to our own language or neural hardwiring, but to an ineffable ground that eludes both words and "things."—ED

  [back]

  ***

  * When Dick claims that The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is his best novel, in and of itself the statement is meaningless because every writer wants to believe this about his most recent work. So it's profoundly satisfying, in no small part because the book will prove to be his last novel as well, that one can make as compelling a case for Transmigration as for The Man in the High Castle or Ubik or A Scanner Darkly. Paradoxically, for all its theology and philosophical aspirations, and for all the visionary craziness of Dick's work as a whole, Transmigration becomes a contender for his masterpiece even as it's the most earthbound of his books. The reason is clear. Though Dick is fascinated at the outset with Bishop Timothy Archer, Angel Archer takes over. Over and over Dick argues that Angel is just a creation of style, which is why in a nutshell authors shouldn't waste two seconds trying to understand their own books. Elsewhere he lets out the real secret and the Exegesis's bombshell: that Angel is his twin sister Jane. Smart, sardonic, and unsentimental, strong and compassionate and unflaggingly honest, surrounded by death and suicide, she is Dick's greatest cha
racter, pursuing salvation and reliving its revelations, and concluding, "You will remember the ground again."—SE

  [back]

  ***

  * This is an impossibly rich passage in which the theme of eucharistic transubstantiation (the blood of Christ) is linked to Valis (the plasmate), a kind of human-divine hybridization (the interspecies symbiosis and cross-bonding), and the dual-brain Double God (Ditheon), all of which are in turn linked to the registers of sexual union (the hierogamy or "sacred marriage") and, in true Phil Dickian style, the act of reading. Through these different registers Dick presents the hermeneutical acts of reading and interpreting the New Testament as an esoteric process of mystical union and erotic divinization.—JJK

  [back]

  ***

  * The radical interconnection Dick perceived between himself and the cosmos extended to the natural world—what I have elsewhere called the "ecodelic" insight that we are not separable from the biosphere in which we live. In this sense, 2-3-74 enabled Dick to look beyond the illusion of our separation from each other and the biosphere. This revelation was anything but comfortable. Ordinary consciousness is essentially predicated on this separation; when it becomes palpably false, ecstasy and panic can follow in equal measure. Even as Dick was beginning to experience a modicum of financial success, his insight into our interconnection had much greater impact on him than his growing income, so much so that he feared for his health.—RD

  [back]

  ***

  * Here Dick extends his ecodelic insight to the population of the planet, whose spiritual and ecological destinies have now become one. This "leverage," however, must be recognized and experienced if it is to have any effect. The years since Dick penned this line have been a mixture of recognition and denial. Is it still possible to tune in to Valis's ecodelic frequency? Might we receive the Valis transmission today?—RD